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Comment by udkl | Hacker News Reader

At this point it feels like notifications for reply activity should be a default feature of HN.

Not having notifications causes abrupt ends of discussions because the author didn't realize a reply was posted.

Reply notifications furthers the goal of HN as a discussion forum.

Nah, I think that it's important that people don't get to invested into their comments. That's how flamewars keep going.

I care mostly about the general conversation here than that one comment I made yesterday afternoon

I'm the other way. I don't trust the users here to be real or not vote manip. Top comments are most dangerous.

The heart of discussion can be found in the details, not the surface.

I like how it is. I have to actively go to my comments when I feel like it. That means I never end up in the situation that I get some notification where I have to immidiately answer in the heat of the moment.

I wish more of the internet was like this.

Receiving a notification of a reply does not comply you to write one yourself, at least not immediately. Even if this was added as a feature, no one would expect quick replies. As an example we can look to Reddit's comment system.

I know, but it does take my attention when I didn’t ask for it. I wouldn’t complain about notifications as an additional feature, but I don’t see the benefits outwheigh the downsides when it should become a default — especially from a community perspective.

What I want is a "Threads" page that only shows messages to which I haven't had the last word or upvoted/downvoted. That way I could quickly scan and see if there were replies to my previous comments that I hadn't seen yet. Perhaps most of the time those are the ends of the conversations, but right now I have to skim through many comments where I'm waiting on the other person if I want to be sure I'm not missing a comment where the other person is waiting on me.

I bet if someone were to build a tool that showed me all of these threads that I didn't reply or upvote/downvote to a response to one of my comments, I would discover a few gems I missed because I was AFK.

The theory being: if someone took the time to reply to a comment of mine, the least I can do is upvote/downvote their comment.

I use a third party notifier and I very much do not want it to become a default option. I know it makes me more likely to quickly reply to a reply, which is bad for the site if many do it.

But isn’t the quality of discussions a different problem?

It’s related to notifications. The longer a user goes between being presented an opportunity to reply, a) the more time they will have had to think about the topic, b) the more likely they will be to write a complete response, instead of just enough to prompt a further reply, c) the less likely they will be to reply when a reply is not necessary. A good HN thread has fewer, comments (fewer than this one. :) )

I actually wrote a chrome extension which does this AND generates a news feed for the user (of people they follow).

I didn’t release it because it kind of seems counter HN tbh.

I would be okay with this but only if it's turned off by default and I can subscribe to specific threads/replies.

It also avoids unnecessary circular discussions

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