Ask PG:Let us know when someone has replied to a comment? | Hacker News Reader

Ask PG:Let us know when someone has replied to a comment?

13 points10dpd7 comments

I've noticed a lot of hanging threads on HN, where the thread just seems to stop mid-conversation. This occurs not so much on front page, popular threads, but on the vast long tail of posts. Providing a mechanism to let me know that someone has replied to a comment I've made would probably raise engagement.

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This functionality used to be provided by notifio, a YC company that went out of business. There is now HNNotify [1] for this.

[1] http://hnnotify.com/

The "threads" link lets a person review their posts and see if anyone has responded. However, in my experience, there's rarely any continuation of the conversation following my delayed responses, i.e. if I respond to a response that's two hours old, odds are that the person to whom I responded will not respond back.

In addition, a mechanism which notifies people when they haven't had the last word probably would be detrimental to the overall tenor of HN.

For replies to your comments or submissions there is HN_Notify: http://hnnotify.com/

Edit: I see nickbarnwell beat me to it, but I'll upvote his reply and let mine stand anyway.

Drives me mental this, I dislike having to go over conversations to find if someone has replied or if someone replies to a previous comment than my last ones I end up going through them all. I don't really want an email whenever someone replies but rather some type of notification when I visit the site.

Emails are intrusive in my eyes and clutter my inbox, I just want to be told when someone has replied when I visit the site.

I will not strongly favor a notification mechanism, I like hn because I consume this website and not the opposite. Notifications kind of create an urge to respond quickly which may not be necessary in most cases. However, adding optional setting in profile page would respect both who want to be notified and those who don't.

Lack of notifications means that conversations can't stretch for longer than an hour or so.

You'll never get a reply if you respond to something someone said yesterday.

I go to HN because it isn't just a random news site with laypeople commenting on tech they don't understand; it's an aggregated news site with commentary from the exact people I want that commentary from. I've found myself not bothering to ask questions I want to ask because no one will see it after a certain amount of time despite the fact that threads that are over a year old end up on the front page.

Additionally, it sucks having to click two times (User > Comments) just to see if someone's responded every few minutes/hours. I've got better things to do. Notifications are a passive feature; you can choose to ignore them or turn them off, but I think they are vital to sites that tout their userbase and the intelligence therein. You could almost say Reddit's success can be hinged on the orangereds.

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