People always say that, but while that may be true to a certain extent, it also inhibits productive discussions and also inhibits users from making potentially beneficial connections (I have actually beneficially connected with people IRL from HackerNews, so it is possible, and I think more such connections could occur with some changes to the site).
I think a couple add-ons could mitigate the harmful effects:
- Ability to turn them off for certain threads
- Ability to block users
- Perhaps automatically turning off the notifications after x number/count, which would basically put people on notice that they have to exchange contact info or something if they want to continue the convo (??)
Ultimately, without notifications a lot of the point of the "reply" functionality is gone.
And it's not just about "current" convos either; a number of times, I have found a useful thread via Googling and wanted to ask a question of one of the posters, but of course, if the thread is older than even a day or two, this is a totally pointless endeavor because they will never know I replied to a comment.
Who knows if there was even a point in my replying here--you may never see it!!