Ask YC: How do you follow YC threads you enjoy? | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC: How do you follow YC threads you enjoy?

29 pointsbprater48 comments

Often, I find great stories and comments I enjoy here and plan to return to see more comments, but when I get back to the site -- I completely forget.

Do any of you have a simple technique (or even a script) for keeping an eye on posts you enjoy?

View on HN

On the related note: how do you keep track of which comments are new since your last visit of the thread?

HN/reddit system with comments jumping around based on votes makes it hard just to quickly skim for differences.

Could there be a way to highlight not seen items? I found this a big help for information overload on the sites that do it (e.g. Google Reader, Bloglines).

However, I couldn't figure out how to do it elegantly (i.e. not needing to keep state on the server for each user) for prioritized threaded comments systems like HN/reddit.

For updates of a single page it's easy, you just need to bake timestamps for each item and page creation into HTML/JS and check them against the last page timestamp stored in the cookie.

But this system breaks down for multiple pages, as each one would need own cookie entry, otherwise any site visit would mark all new items as read.

That's btw MetaFilter's problem with highlighting new comments. Though there it's easier to follow the conversation due to linear nature of comment system.

Maybe the solution could be to have some dual way of accessing comments? Like prioritized threaded view for the first view and linear time ordered view for subsequent following?

Sorry! I was trying to vote you up, but voted you down by mistake instead. Someone else please vote the parent comment up for me.

I agree about the comment movements but it has been discussed here before. It would be nice to have the option to keep comments the way they are (moving) or to view them based on the time they were left.

If you know which comments on a page are new, then you also know which ones are old. The easy answer is to just gray out the older posts (only remotely challenging because the gray background of the page is about the color I WOULD have suggested for old comment text) -- and just leave the new comments as they are.

That allows you to easily skim the page for new content, while still allowing you to see the new posts in context.

A Digg-style collapse would also probably work, but for some reason, I see grayed out text more in line with the ycombinator mantra.

I wrote a greasemonkey script to help me. It marks comments that have already been read. The way it marks comments is ugly and probably backwards (i.e. you probably only want to mark new comments, not the other way around). I did it as a proof-of-concept, mostly, but this thread convinced me to make it available.

http://dionidium.com/projects/greasemonkey/markasread.user.j...

YC Tracker does this for single pages:

http://www.selfdebugging.com/2007/10/09/yc-news-tracker-a-be...

However you have to remember to run the script first time you see the page to be able to compare later. This kills it for me most of the time.

Should I add some kind of feature for this?

Yes.

Let me rephrase that. Does anyone have any suggestions for features of this type?

Perhaps let users bookmark comment threads, and see what changes have been made by highlighting them a little, or putting a red star next to them?

You could tie that to upvoting just like for stories.

I would like the option to get a summery email every 12 to 24 hours that shows which of my comments where responded to. I know you can look through your personal comments, but it's easy to miss someones response and after a few days it seems silly to send a detailed answer which is unlikely to be read.

What about an option on the threads page to order your comments by how recently they've had a reply (by any descendant comment) + associated RSS feed.

I usually prefer RSS feeds over emails.

Agreed, since RSS feeds can be emailed to you. It's more flexible.

It'd be nice to be able to easily follow your favorite commenters as well.

Edit: You can do this with Backtype, but a feature built in to HN would be great.

I like the way Reddit does this -- when someone replies to a comment you made, your mailbox icon at the top right glows red.

Doesn't solve the question of following whole threads, but it's great for dialogue (not just because I notice when people reply to me, but because other people notice when I reply to them).

This would be nice. I'd like to suggest a few things too. Sometimes I find good threads or interesting submissions that I want to read/analyze in the future, mainly because I don't have time at the moment, so I upvote threads. My saved list keeps growing even though I have done dealing in some of them. it would be great if you can delete it from saved list.

I might be thinking of a different feature but I like how on LtU it says "13 comments | 5 new comments" for example

Perhaps some sort of interaction history that shows the last few threads you commented in if they've had any responses.

You might also consider:

Let the server remember when a user has last opened a thread. If it is re-opened by the user, show only (or emphasize) postings with a newer timestamp.

Let me see a page showing the most recent comments on every thread that I upvoted, commented on, or voted on the comments of.

Just enable notifications by email. So an email notification when someone replies to my comment or to a thread.

My random thoughts on a way to keep track of this:

1. RSS feeds where the link goes to the hn thread instead of the linked page? Though not everyone uses an RSS program integrated with their browser and opening an external program to keep track of HN threads isn't exactly good UX.

2. Keep track of how many comments were made when someone first views the thread and if there's any new comments, change the link color back to black instead of the grey that would show that it was already viewed.

3. The star icon previously mentioned. Have items automatically decay from the list after a certain amount of time (or time without a comment) to keep it clean. Upvotes can/should double as favorites since hn keeps track what someone voted for already.

Starred conversations seems like an appropriate solution.

I really like this idea too, just like stars in Gmail. A star would appear next to the article name in the index page (and detail page). One click and a star next to the article.

Works like a charm in Gmail. No need to even float stars to the top, just allow the user to filter only starred articles with one click.

Off topic but still relevant: can we have thread folding for comments?

I track conversations I'm involved in through the Threads link at the top (which is quite useful). I'd like to be able to have a one click add-this-conversation-I'm-not-involved-in-to-my-Threads-list button.

I have a little request, if possible.

For code blocks, instead of "two-spacing", could you implement a delimiter, e.g. [code][/code]? For something more elegant than BBCode, maybe ##...## could delimit code.

I make a post in it, then check on my "threads" page (and my post's parent) every now and then. I'm doing it now, for example.

Yep this is what I do too.

Same here. Someone wrote a Web ap that would sort of do this for you, and emit an RSS feed (It think), but it would create an entry for each up or down vote, which was not that useful to me.

I do that too... works fine for me.

I built a little app for this...

http://ycfeeds.com/feed/comments-on-item?item=396186

My technique is super low-tech. In my bookmarks bar, positioned conveniently below the site's favicon, I have a folder which is called "For Later". Into this folder I drop stuff I'll want to come back to at some point. Then (and here's the super part of my super low-tech claim), when I'm done with it I move it to another folder called "x" which I periodically delete and re-create.

This works everywhere with no extensions or anything, I use Foxmarks to sync the bookmarks themselves between machines (which you could skip if you only used the one machine), that's it.

Let's hear it for low tech. I like it when people are able to chain existing, simple tools; instead of engineering a new kludge.

yeah, i vote them up. there's a link in your profile that shows your saved stuff.

I usually just wait for the RSS feed to re-announce it later on and remind me, but I like your method better. ;)

Ah, cool, I didn't know up-voting plopped them in that area.

The downside is that I like to up-vote some posts, but don't necessary want to follow the on-going conversation.

Concurred. It took me a while to find that saved thing though, it should be more prominent.

It used to be in the menu.

Oh, cool. Thanks for pointing that out. I didn't know that was there.

To be honest, I usually just keep the thread open in a tab for a few hours until things die down. That said, I generally only comment on a handful of threads per week, so that's a manageable system for me. For those of you who participate more, I think that wouldn't work so well.

I upvote articles that I don't have time to read, but want to keep track of. I've been doing this for at least a year, since the /saved?id=vlad feature came out (articles a user upvotes are available via that suffix to the url.)

I keep it in Google Reader and just revisit the next time I go through the feed.

Bookmark to instapaper. Come back and read later

readitlater addon on firefox

leave it open in a tab, refresh later.

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