HN Notify • Hacker News Board

Re: HN Notify

#31

Post by bambax » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 1:22 PM UTC

Jugurtha wrote: post #28

Nice! What would also be cool would be the following: -1- Being able to follow a thread you haven't commented on. -2- Being able to follow a comment that is not yours. The reason behind number 2 is that sometimes, you see an interesting comment and you'd be interested to know what people think about it, so you'll follow it and be notified whenever people reply to it.

From the form, it seems you can "subscribe" to any HN handle, not just your own...?

I don't know if you can use the same email for different handles, but with gmail for example you can produce an infinity of different email addresses.

Re: HN Notify

#32

Post by Jugurtha » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 1:34 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #31

Jugurtha wrote: post #28

Nice! What would also be cool would be the following: -1- Being able to follow a thread you haven't commented on. -2- Being able to follow a comment that is not yours. The reason behind number 2 is that sometimes, you see an interesting comment and you'd be interested to know what people think about it, so you'll follow it and be notified whenever people reply to it.

From the form, it seems you can "subscribe" to any HN handle, not just your own...? I don't know if you can use the same email for different handles, but with gmail for example you can produce an infinity of different email addresses.

I tried to put my e-mail address and "bambax" as HN Username, it returned "bambax is already a registered user of HN Notify."

So you can't use it if the person you want to "follow" is already registered.

Now, I tried "pg" and it subscribed me. The result of this is that if "pg" wanted to subscribe, he wouldn't be allowed.

I tried to unsubscribe. Unsubscription is e-mail based and not handle based. i.e: You can't unsubscribe from just one user, you unsubscribe from all the users, since you're taking out the root (e-mail address).

Now I have to subscribe again to get my own replies.

PS: Been notified of your reply by HNNotify :)

Re: HN Notify

#33

Post by DjangoReinhardt » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 1:35 PM UTC

This is truly super!

I did something similar for RSS feeds and twitter: http://update-me.herokuapp.com - it is an RSS reader via Twitter. It DMs you post updates to feeds you subscribe to.

Could I request access to your API? I'm thinking of adding a HN subscription feature to @updt_me, something along the following lines:

1. User sends a tweet subscribing to thread ID, e.g. @updt_me START HN 6499036

2. @updt_me pings hnnotify with a callback to setup a subscription for the thread.

3. hnnotify pings @updt_me with thread-updates via the callback. POST payload, I think?

4. @updt_me DMs update to the user's twitter inbox! YAY!

I'm sure there's a simpler process than the one I outlined above. If you have any ideas, I'll be glad to hear them! :)

Re: HN Notify

#34

Post by bambax » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 1:46 PM UTC

Jugurtha wrote: post #32

bambax wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the form, it seems you can "subscribe" to any HN handle, not just your own...? I don't know if you can use the same email for different handles, but with gmail for example you can produce an infinity of different email addresses.

I tried to put my e-mail address and "bambax" as HN Username, it returned "bambax is already a registered user of HN Notify." So you can't use it if the person you want to "follow" is already registered. Now, I tried "pg" and it subscribed me. The result of this is that if "pg" wanted to subscribe, he wouldn't be allowed. I tried to unsubscribe. Unsubscription is e-mail based and not handle based. i.e: You can't unsu…

Ok, so obviously it needs work! I just subscribed while making the parent comment BTW, and find the service useful.

It would make a lot of sense to allow handles to be monitored by many different people; some users are super popular and I guess many people would like to "follow" them...

Re: HN Notify

#35

Post by tomasien » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 2:24 PM UTC

You should make one for Stack Overflow: when you ask a SO question, you're literally stuck until someone answers it.

Re: HN Notify

#36

Post by DjangoReinhardt » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 2:53 PM UTC

tomasien wrote: post #35

You should make one for Stack Overflow: when you ask a SO question, you're literally stuck until someone answers it.

Do SO questions come with their own RSS feeds?

If yes, then try using http://twitter.com/updt_me to 'follow' the questions - you'll get a DM whenever there are new answers in the RSS/Atom feed! :)

It's a self-learning project I built over a weekend, so it's kinda rough around the edges, apologies in advance! Do let me know what you think.

Re: HN Notify

#37

Post by xerophtye » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 3:10 PM UTC

rcfox wrote: post #15

oblique63 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, the reality is probably that PG is just super busy and does not have the time and bandwidth to build features out. I totally get that, it's the reason I mentioned the 7-year time window though. You'd think that something like that would've been done at some point during all that time by some interns or something by now, even if it was a super low priority. I'm guessing that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" ph…

There's no little indicator, however you can click the "threads" link up at the top to see all of your comments and their replies.

came here to say that

Re: HN Notify

#38

Post by tomasien » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 3:36 PM UTC

DjangoReinhardt wrote: post #36

tomasien wrote: post #35

You should make one for Stack Overflow: when you ask a SO question, you're literally stuck until someone answers it.

Do SO questions come with their own RSS feeds? If yes, then try using http://twitter.com/updt_me to 'follow' the questions - you'll get a DM whenever there are new answers in the RSS/Atom feed! :) It's a self-learning project I built over a weekend, so it's kinda rough around the edges, apologies in advance! Do let me know what you think.

They do! Also, it turns out you can turn on email notifications to your answers for any question at any time, but only every 3 hours, ever day, or every week. I want them the second they happen, so I'm gonna try your RSS function!

Re: HN Notify

#39

Post by StavrosK » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 4:55 PM UTC

DavideNL wrote: post #24

oblique63 wrote: post #9

Surely I can't be the only one wondering why this kind of functionality isn't just built-in already (with option to enable/disable accordingly)? I mean, the site has been around for about 7 years now, and the whole 'community' aspect seems to be a big selling point, so it just seems odd...

The question is not only if it can be easily implemented (technically) but also whether it would have a positive impact on the quality of the comments... (notifications = faster replies = more emtotion = less thinking = less value)

There's a huge non-sequitur there. You're assuming that people who aren't getting notified of their replies are thinking about what they're going to say on the topic. I don't think that's true. You see the reply to your comment, then you start thinking, then you reply to it. The time from seeing the comment to writing the reply doesn't change with getting notified or not.

Re: HN Notify

#40

Post by wpietri » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 5:18 PM UTC

Say, what's the etiquette with scraping Hacker News? I thought it was forbidden, and I've seen HN-based tools that closed down because they got blocked. But if this tool is going to crawl HN regularly, presumably they've got that figured out.