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Ask HN: Why doesn't HN alert users in some manner to new replies?

news.ycombinator.com

31–40 of 239 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't HN alert users in some manner to new replies?

#31
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most are so subtle you wouldn't notice, and that's the point. That can't be the point. There's no reason to introduce new features with the expectation that no one will ever notice or use them. Honestly, I think this forum cargo-cults its "minimalist" aesthetic far too much.

Obviously GP comment is saying you don't notice because the changes integrate so well into the existing system, not saying it's desirable for users to literally not notice the features. Otherwise the maintainers of HN are morons introducing features that no one will use. Honestly... nitpicking comments with some dumb hyper-literal interpretation to find something tiny and pointless to disagree about is an aspect of H…

> Obviously he's saying you don't notice because the changes integrate so well into the existing system.

Yes, to the point that people literally never notice them, which is (or should be considered) a problem. People still complain that HN lacks thread folding, even though the feature's been deployed for months. They don't see the links or never bother clicking them. People have been here for years and never noticed the site has a footer with links to other features.

That's not a feature of elegant integration, it's the fault of a purposely obscurant layout.

>Nitpicking comments to find something tiny and pointless to disagree about is an aspect of HN I could do without.

As is the assumption that all criticism of HN and its features is pointless nitpicking. Be less defensive.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't HN alert users in some manner to new replies?

#32
post #29

I've been using this Chrome extension for a while and it's worked really well for me: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-notifi... They recently tweeted > In the last 30 days, Hacker News users sent out 337,875 comments, responding to 29,258 users. https://twitter.com/magicbell_io/status/1488441548857561095

This extension is closed-source and its code is obfuscated. It also phones home according to the Firefox permissions. I'm not sure I would trust it.

Edit: more information in the HN announcement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26590720

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't HN alert users in some manner to new replies?

#33

Honestly I’m glad it doesn’t. Reply notifications may increase engagement, but I’d argue they reduce the quality of discussion, since such notifications would encourage rapid back and forth arguments.

They could do delayed notifications. Not having them at all sucks because you are pretty much guaranteed not to see replies to older comments.

I just remember to check the comments in my profile page and see how much my past comments have been replied to.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't HN alert users in some manner to new replies?

#34
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't change nothing, but they're very careful when they introduce a change. Most are so subtle you wouldn't notice, and that's the point. Some in recent memory I can think of: * prev/next/parent links * Show HN can now have both a text body and a link (they used to only have a link and you had to submit a reply with your explanation)

>Most are so subtle you wouldn't notice, and that's the point. That can't be the point. There's no reason to introduce new features with the expectation that no one will ever notice or use them. Honestly, I think this forum cargo-cults its "minimalist" aesthetic far too much.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't HN alert users in some manner to new replies?

#35
post #19

Its typical that everyone is defending the status quo. I doubt the reason it doesn't have that feature is because they are against it. I think it's just one of those things that adds a significant amount of complexity without a ton of benefit for most people. But I also think if they had several developers working on the site, they would have done it. You can just scan down recent threads to see if there are replies.…

I could be misremembering but think dang really is against it. He’s a philosophical guy about community management.

Then why did he make https://www.hnreplies.com/ ?

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't HN alert users in some manner to new replies?

#36

It's a filter, and it works very well. If you're tech savvy you can figure it out for yourself, if you're not then what are you doing on HN? Here is your latest reply RSS feed: https://hnrss.org/replies?id=warrenm

There are people from different types of technical (or not!) backgrounds in all stages of their careers here. Your litmus test for who is correctly "on HN" seems unnecessarily exclusionary. I'm not sure if you meant it to come across like that.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't HN alert users in some manner to new replies?

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could do delayed notifications. Not having them at all sucks because you are pretty much guaranteed not to see replies to older comments.

I just remember to check the comments in my profile page and see how much my past comments have been replied to.

I used to do that, but you can just click "threads".

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't HN alert users in some manner to new replies?

#39
post #36

It's a filter, and it works very well. If you're tech savvy you can figure it out for yourself, if you're not then what are you doing on HN? Here is your latest reply RSS feed: https://hnrss.org/replies?id=warrenm

There are people from different types of technical (or not!) backgrounds in all stages of their careers here. Your litmus test for who is correctly "on HN" seems unnecessarily exclusionary. I'm not sure if you meant it to come across like that.

It probably did come out wrong. The point is that those people need to have enough motivation to stay and put up with the difficulty of using the site. This might seem counter-intuitive, but I'm convinced the quality of discussions can be proportional to the user hostility of the website :). See Reddit, Facebook, etc.

An automated mechanism of getting instant replies would create flame wars much more easily too.

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