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The only thing I miss are comment reply notifications. Someone might reply to something I wrote in comments a week ago and I have to visit my comment history pe
by babuskov 8y ago
The only thing I miss are comment reply notifications. Someone might reply to something I wrote in comments a week ago and I have to visit my comment history periodically to check that.
It doesn't have to be an active notification. Just add a numeric field added to user account that means "you got N new replies" and show it in the top-right corner next to my username. Once I see it, I will go and browse through comments to find it. When you open your comments page, it would reset this number to zero.
- shittyadmin 8y agoI honestly don't mind the lack of comment reply notifications because I find that it makes conversations less aggressive than on sites like reddit which do that. Less of a feeling of a mandated reply, more opportunities for other users to speak up on your behalf.
- BOBOTWINSTON 8y agoIf someone engages with me near the post time on Reddit, then I have no issues ignoring them or responding respectfully. If someone counterpoints something I wrote 30+ days ago... nobody else is reading so it is now a cage match.
- vinceguidry 8y agoI like Quora for this. The threat of a BNBR ding is eternal and the panopticon unwavering. As a result every interaction becomes an opportunity for reflection.
- hyperpape 8y agoWhat is a BNBR ding? DuckDuckGo didn't turn anything up for me.
- petecooper 8y ago>BNBR Be Nice, Be Respectful https://www.quora.com/What-is-Quoras-Be-Nice-Be-Respectful-policy https://www.quora.com/What-is-Quoras-Be-Nice-Be-Respectful-p...
- psalminen 8y ago"Be Nice, Be Respectful"[0] [0] https://www.quora.com/What-is-Quoras-Be-Nice-Be-Respectful-policy https://www.quora.com/What-is-Quoras-Be-Nice-Be-Respectful-p...
- nerflad 8y agoMy version of being Nice and Respectful tends to skew toward "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all". Which topics still have a good experience on Quora? I find the quality of the discussion, especially the quality of many of the questions themselves, to be quite low. They need more aggressive community moderation to filter out duplicates, miscategorizations and nonsense before potential answerers are notified/requested. It makes the site look bad. Almost every day I get an email that says something like "nerflad, so-and-so requested your answer to the question 'how dows computer work?'". Nearly all of the music questions are especially asinine and I just don't have the patience. Like so many others, I have completely stopped using Quora. Yes, occasionally there are still diamonds in the rough and Alan Kay will pop in to say something, but these kinds of interactions are the exception rather than the norm. Stack Overflow's moderation is considered Draconian by a lot of people, but it's their lifeblood in my opinion. Q+A sites need a hedge against the descent into Yahoo Answers madness.
- microcolonel 8y ago> "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" I think this is the wrong model for productive discussions, since being afraid that somebody will be upset about merely being contradicted can tend to chill people from refuting things at all (which, to me at least, seems like the purpose of having conversations in the first place). I'd say it's more "If what you're saying is hostile to your interlocutor rather than the argument, then it does not belong in the thread.", however it seems some moderators do not feel that this is sufficient, hence I am hellbanned.
- vinceguidry 8y agoI don't follow topics, I follow people. I'll read anything by Thierry Etienne Joseph Rotty, Dima Vorobiev, Franklin Veaux, Jenny Hawkins, Alex Cooper, among others. Following topics just gravitates you towards the cesspool that any large internet community has. I'm really careful about getting into discussions with people, particularly because I'm often operating in the atheism-theism debate. My default response, like you, is to not engage. When I do, I try to pick my words carefully. The second the interaction turns hostile, I'll report if warranted but in any case immediately disengage.
- hiccuphippo 8y agoThe main reason I'd like that functionality is so I can read the responses. Sometimes karma changes are an indicator you got responses but not always.
- xrisk 8y agoI think the “threads” page fulfils that purpose.
- christophilus 8y agoClick your username-> comments, and you get above list of your comments, ordered by time. I think it’s perfect. I don’t like having little notification icons everywhere.
- JshWright 8y agoIsn't that the same thing as "Threads" in the header?
- christophilus 8y agoWhaat! Yes, it is. I’ve never clicked the “threads” link, it would seem.
- chasedehan 8y agoWhoa! Same, I guess I never clicked "Threads". Even things as simple as HN can still have more buttons/links than a lot of people will actually use.
- anothergoogler 8y agoAgreed, the "red envelope" of reddit is designed to elicit a visceral reaction.
- dopamean 8y ago> I find that it makes conversations less aggressive This is a really interesting perspective on it that I hadn't considered. I have long been annoyed by the lack of comment notifications but now that you put it that way I think you're right. This actually may be a feature of HN rather than a bug. Thanks for sharing that point.
- gfodor 8y agoThis might be the most meta comment chain on HN.
- joatmon-snoo 8y agoThis entire thread itself is pretty meta :)
- dreamcompiler 8y agoThis reply is quite clever, but at the current nesting level, nobody will notice.
- boterock 8y agoUnless it is the most upvoted comment
- toupeira 8y agoAnd behold, it is :)
- mikestew 8y agoNo, mgiannopoulos[0], there is no limit on nesting replies that I'm aware of. I'm nesting another one now! There is rate-limiting, though, which is probably what you hit. Wait a bit, and you can reply. Or click the "XX minutes ago", and I've found you can reply there. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18186528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18186528
- joecasson 8y agoI like this mentality. Notifications are inherently disruptive and can cause agitation by their mere existence.
- cmroanirgo 8y agoAgreed. At first, I thought I wanted notifications, but now I let it slide, and watch how the conversation moves, often to an unexpected direction. I increasingly find that I'm happy to let it go that way, rather than 'defending a position'. This, of course, makes the need for comment notifications less important.
- hindsightbias 8y agoAnd here I thought nobody replied because I was always right on this internets.
- glglwty 8y ago4chan doesn't have reply notification either and I wonder if the theory applies there..
- westmeal 8y agoOnly if you post cats.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoSomeone might reply to something I wrote in comments a week ago If you leave a lot of comments, going back a week to check your comments is quite the burden. In practice, this means you may never see such replies. There used to be a 3rd party HN comment notify service and it went down. It was replaced with a different one. I seem to no longer be getting those either here lately. Not sure when it stopped, but recent-ish. It doesn't matter that much for current, active discussions. But it does mean I am vastly less likely to have any idea that someone replied to something of mine from a few days back and that has to potential to have me ignoring someone asking a good faith question, among other things. That is something that somewhat bothers me.
- dangrossman 8y agoI host http://hnreplies.com http://hnreplies.com which provides comment reply notifications by email, FYI.
- AdmiralAsshat 8y agoWhat happens if I sign up and then decide later I want to disconnect your service?
- perryprog 8y agoThere's a button at the bottom of each email to unsubscribe.
- azhenley 8y agoI agree completely. I use https://hnnotify.xyz/ https://hnnotify.xyz/ which emails me periodically with all my new replies (other similar services exist, my friend happened to make this one).
- yla92 8y agoYou should check out HN Replies (http://hnreplies.com http://hnreplies.com). Not done by me and just a happy user. I don't comment a lot but it works pretty nicely whenever I do.
- maxxxxx 8y ago"Just add a numeric field added to user account that means "you got N new replies" and show it in the top-right corner next to my username. " I would like that too. I don't mind not having E-mail notifications but a simple indicator would be very useful.
- jv22222 8y agoThis can also help with that (in part) - https://littlebirdie.io https://littlebirdie.io - if you plug your own username in there.
- mindgam3 8y agohttp://www.hnreplies.com http://www.hnreplies.com is a great solution for this. Been using it for a while, works perfectly usually with a few minutes of lag. IMO this should be a core feature. But I’m just happy to have something that works.
- zamber 8y agoThere's hnreplies.com for that ;).
- gymshoes 8y agoI think that is a better way to do it because it prevents long chains of comments that start looking like a conversation between two people. Also, checking manually in peace is better than getting distracted by notifications.