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

The last thing I found was this Show HN post from 2016 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11080539)

I wish it had something like a reply counter. I understand that creating and maintaining a notification system is not ideal. But if there is a counter for the number of replies I've gotten, and the number is larger than yesterday, then I know I have to check my comment history.

there's this: https://www.hnreplies.com I understand it is built by an HN moderator, actually, so somewhat endorsed.

If I see my karma go up, that usually tells me that someone may have replied to something I said. Otherwise, I'm glad there's no alert for new replies. Conversation should be intentional. If I'm gonna be reading what someone said in response to me, I better already have enough motivation to check back and see if someone replied. When I don't check back, it's probably because I've got something more important to focus my attention on, and when I reply to someone I assume there's only a small chance they'll actually see it or reply back.

An extension to alert for replies to recent comments/submissions could be really easy to make, though. Just check `/threads?id=` every few minutes, compare the content of the previous page snapshot, and collect unique replies into a set.

I get mine from https://hnnotify.xyz/ - seems to work well.

I agree that it would be nice for HN to manage this directly.