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Ask HN: How do you get notified of reply comments on HN?
I'm not sure how others do it, but how do you know when some one replies to your comment? Do you continually refresh the "Threads" page throughout the day?
I hope not; it seems woefully inefficient. Hopefully, there is a smarter, simpler way to do this.
- hsjqllzlfkf 3y agoYou can't, and it's intentional. They say getting notified of responses increases flamewars. I think it makes a lot of sense - if people can't talk to each other they can't get into flame wars. I think they should just go all the way and remove comments altogether.
- hammyhavoc 3y agoYou absolutely can via third-party services.
- troydavis 3y agoPoint your RSS reader at https://hnrss.org/ https://hnrss.org/, namely https://hnrss.org/replies?id=redonkulus https://hnrss.org/replies?id=redonkulus
- redonkulus 3y agoHmm, I haven't used an RSS reader in many years. Thanks for the tip though.
- mostlysimilar 3y agoI just go to my profile -> comments page and take a few seconds to check my most recent comments. I have this extension that highlights any new comments, which makes it a lot easier. https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news
- capableweb 3y ago> I hope not; it seems woefully inefficient. Hopefully, there is a smarter, simpler way to do this. It's inefficient on purpose, as otherwise it's easier to get into flame-wars, or something like that (paraphrased from a dang/pg comment somewhere, sometime). Personally I just check the /threads page whenever I have time, and check for new comments. Sometimes I spot new replies to my comments because I come back to the whole comment section of a interesting submission to check in on other ongoing discussions.
- mindcrime 3y agoDo you continually refresh the "Threads" page throughout the day? Yes. I hope not; it seems woefully inefficient. It's that way by design, as I understand it. Pg wasn't trying to create a traditional discussion forum when he built HN and from what I can recall reading/hearing, he intentionally did not implement reply notifications and suchlike. That said, there have been various 3rd party "HN notifier" services over the years, like hnnotify.com (or something like that) and hnreply.com (or similar). Not sure if any of those are still up and running or not though.
- billylo 3y agohttps://www.hnreplies.com/ https://www.hnreplies.com/
- dmbche 3y agoUsing an app like Hacki gives me a nicer feel to HN in some respects - it notifies you on replies.
- quickthrower2 3y agoFor many things you can rely on others replying for you! For personal things keep a disposable email in your HN profile.
- n8henrie 3y agoRSS (several tools available)
- philonoist 3y agoThere is a Telegram bot that worked fine till date. I found it on HN itself. https://t.me/hn_replies_bot https://t.me/hn_replies_bot An unrelated tip, an official Gmail bot exists in Telegram for those who want to declutter ads and stuff - https://t.me/gmailbot https://t.me/gmailbot Unfortunately, it goes radio silent on recursively discussed replies between any other people who took heated debate under your reply. I hope there is also a ChatGPT service which summarizes each HN comment with its own input and backing up with citation of its criticism/opinion. That makes spirit of HN eat magic mushrooms and steroids. To avoid it being an intrusive eye-sore, we should hover over a symbol at the end of each comment which pops up those paragraphs. I can only imagine!
- eimrine 3y ago> it seems woefully inefficient. Why receiving some non-sensual comments in a random time of a day do you consider efficient? Don't you have a life with more important events than some random dude's comment? Every time you are receiving the beep you are inevitably losing some context, maybe even get thrown off from "a stream". For me reading HN is OK only before and after work, not instead. Maybe I would like to read some reactions to my ancient comments and I do not know where I have aquired additional +10 karma points over the last night, but theese are so unimportant things in my life that I will not lose anything if I dot't see it eventually.
- danwee 3y agoI don't. Whenever I come back to HN, I may click on my username at the top right and see if my latest comments were replied. If I have the time to reply then I reply, otherwise no reply is ever attempted.
- mdwalters 3y agoI don't.
- muzani 3y agoYeah, I do it that way. It's a feature, not a bug. I turn off push notifications on all other social media too.
- desaiguddu 3y agoHNnotify is a free service