I love that they don't change anything. Social media services like Reddit that change things eventually change into shit.
Last night I had a dream that HN had a new UI. Time to spend less time on HN.
What did it look like?
Ask HN: Why doesn't HN alert users in some manner to new replies?
171–180 of 239 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't HN alert users in some manner to new replies?
#172This has been addressed by dang before, one representative pastequote from a recent (ish) comment: Yes, I think we'll continue to avoid the notification system, not just because of flamewars but also because (relatedly) it's not so compatible with curiosity. Push notifications seem to jack up the nervous system in a way that's good for engagement but not necessarily for users—we all experience this elsewhere on the i…
Strongly agreed!
I think the requirement that at least two participants need to make some effort to keep the conversation going, is generally an extremely good thing.
For the very rare thread where I hope for a belated reply, I'll keep a tab open and refresh it every day or two until I give up or it expires.
Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't HN alert users in some manner to new replies?
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
thanks for proving my point: I had to go hunting for this submission just to see if anyone had replied/answered And no one has (as of 1133 EST 17-Feb-2022) provided a real answer for why HN has such an obvious feature missing :)
It's the same reason dang needs to manually tell people about 'more' in long threads, or repost previous discussion of the same topic. That was the initial design and no one wants to make new changes because of an absurd idealization of that design. No one wants to rethink old decisions made a long time ago and genuinely wonder if things need to change. Hence people come up with bullshit defences.
'more' links for long threads wasn't HN's initial design. It's a performance workaround and therefore bs in its own right. I'm slowly making progress on a reimplementation of Arc, which will hopefully allow this to go away.
Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't HN alert users in some manner to new replies?
#174OT: how come links in HN text submissions are sometimes clickable and sometimes not? Example of an HN text submission where links are clickable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30345201
The default is not, as explained in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. But we turn them on whenever we see a case that isn't abusive. I don't know of a way to automate that.
Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't HN alert users in some manner to new replies?
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree too. I am able to comment and add to a thread without feeling like I have to then defend my opinion or go back and answer replies. There's no responsibility, in a way, with commenting. I can add an anecdote, or ask a rhetorical question, or even crack a joke, and then move on with my curiosity. It's a good system, and makes it feel very calm here.
What makes a forum interesting IMO is the back and forth discussion that sometimes happens, as long as it's respectful and productive. If you don't occasionally check and answer replies, you'd miss out on the chance of having your opinion challenged and having to defend or amend it, which is a good opportunity for growth. Otherwise it's akin to throwing your thoughts into the well and walking away. You might as well…
"threads" is a simple notification system, imo. That's how I follow up on discussions. It also naturally ages my attention on topics. I'm not going to be responding to three day old discussions that I've chosen in one way or another to move on from.
Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't HN alert users in some manner to new replies?
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe this is also the official reason
It mostly does the opposite because it means getting replies quickly tapers off. After a few days the odds of keeping up a discussion are low, and older discussions are baiscally locked out forever.
Reducing back-and-forth discussions is a feature.
Look at any post that gets a significant number of comments and then scroll to pick out the deepest threads. When the depth comes from lots of people adding information or opinions, the quality is generally pretty high. When the depth comes from a small number of people going back-and-forth, it’s usually not very interesting.
Adding more of the latter type would make HN worse and that’s what you would get more of if they made HN work more like Reddit.
Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't HN alert users in some manner to new replies?
#177TL;DR:
9,000 notifications in 25 days!
Notifications are evil. Or, they can be...
Flo by Moen: I have received nearly 9,000 emails from Flo between January 24th and today, February 17th. Yes, that is an average of 360 emails per for 25 days.
Curious? Read on.
Our insurance company had us install a water leak sensor device made by Moen called "Flo":
https://www.moen.com/search/smart+water
My opinion (and just my opinion) it's a piece of garbage, a waste of time and money.
With that out of the way...
This thing alerts you when it detects various event. It's supposed to be smart? Nah, actually, it's dumb as &*ck.
Example: One of my kids decided a 1.5 hour shower was a good idea. Flo shutoff the water to the entire house at 90 minutes. If this had been a broken pipe in the walls, running for 90 minutes, well, the damage would easily be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is stupid. It protects nothing.
The only scenario where that would have had some value might be if you go on vacation for a week and a water pipe breaks. OK, well, I generally shutoff the water when we go on vacation, so there is no value to this device.
One of the particular notifications has to do with water pressure. Flo sends you an alarm to your phone (via their app) and via email when it exceeds a certain value. We have always had high water pressure. By always I mean, over twenty years. No problems at all. I like this. High water pressure is useful. Flo does not like it.
I probably get no less than ten notifications per day on the app about water pressure. You can snooze them for 24 hours on the app. So, I have to deal with these nonsense notifications every single day. And I can't tell Flo "this is normal, forever, don't bug me".
Email?
As I said at the top, about 360 emails per day, on average, for high water pressure. I now have a collection of nearly 9,000 of these email notifications received during the last 25 days.
Evil.
Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't HN alert users in some manner to new replies?
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have thought for some time that votes should come in two flavors. X if you make a comment, X/10 if you don't. Drive-by voting is of little value, and for abusive posts that need downvoting we have flagging to accomplish quick removal. Giving more weight to people who write a reply would encourage more conversation. Of course, then there is a question of whether it would encourage more thoughtful comments or not, an…
Social voting is broken - and probably shouldn't exist ( https://antipaucity.com/2015/09/16/like-problems-social-voti... ) That said, I'm not asking for notifications on upvotes (like Stack Overflow does) I'm asking for the basic functionality of all internet fora I've interacted with for the last close to 30 years that tell you if you have any replies
HN isn't a forum.
Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't HN alert users in some manner to new replies?
#179Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't HN alert users in some manner to new replies?
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's incredibly disappointing :(
Why? Most users don't want them. And for those that do, there's https://www.hnreplies.com/ , as well as other options mentioned elsewhere here.
Agreed. In fact, I'd like to see HN go even further and close discussions after some limit has been reached, whether it's time- or attention-based.