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Comment by naish | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to be able to flag/mark a particular post so that I can continue to follow the comments that are being generated after it falls off of the front page. This would also help to parse "important" posts from those that have simply been visited. Along with this, it would be nice to be able to then unflag/unmark the post once I've followed it long enough. The unflagging could also be done automatically, after some period of time defined in my profile or per post.

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The first part could theoretically be achieved via your "saved" list (anything you've up voted).

I.e., http://news.ycombinator.com/saved?id=naish

True, but I upvote articles based on value of the article content, not necessarily the comments. I'd like better granularity, especially since all of my submissions are also automatically added to my saved list.

Yes! Yes! Yes! I would get so much more out of the site if I could revisit some threads I'm interested in. I quickly forget when the post is no longer highlight as unvisited.

Maybe threads can be "floated" to the top of the page until they are "unwatched".

In fact, I'll probably forget about this thread by tomorrow -- a thread I'm very much interested in!

I usually make a point of commenting in threads that I'm interested in following, and so I just look at my own comments and then I know what I wanted to follow. Or maybe I actually am only really interested in the sound of my own voice, and the mere fact of my having commented in a thread makes it interesting. Whatever. Works for me.

Not only that but if I do remember/find the threads I'm interested in, I'll definitely not remember which comments I've read already, so...

Wouldn't it be nice to also have the ability to highlight comments that are new since your last visit? That, or the ability to sort comments in chronological order (like in a forum).

How about using the bookmark feature of your web browser?

People don't always read HN from the same computer (and don't necessarily bother to keep bookmarks sync'ed between machines).

Why not just write down the url? I mean, that functionality already exists.

Why don't we just use carrier pigeons when our favorite message boards are down, too.

I'd expand that to have 4 options: hide totally, hide but watch, watch, and normal.

Hide but watch will not show that story on the home page anymore, but will keep track of it for me so I can follow the comments.

Hide totally will remove it from the home page (just for me), so something else can go there.

Expire the flags, say, 3 days after the last comment in the story (rather than a fixed time).

And include a "view all" option of course.

Running corollary to that, I'd love to be able to set HN to give me some sort of alert on site whenever someone has responded to one of my comments/submissions.

There was a Firefox plugin that did this, but it's not 3.0 compatible.

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