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by always_good 2986 days ago
Yeah, without bumping threads on new posts, there's almost no reason to even comment on older topics on HN/Reddit. If it's not on the first two pages, nobody is going to see it.

Even worse, the only person who might see it is the one person you responded to since it's in the profile comment feed, and a back-and-forth isn't very interesting.

This makes forums much different where each new reply bumps the topic into the eyes of any number of people who are online.

The upstream is wrong. Avatars and (ugh) signatures don't make a forum. Being able to converse over time is what does it. That's how you get to know regulars beyond spotting their one-off posts per submission.
2 comments
freehunter 2986 days ago
Yeah for sure, and even here on HN. I don't reply to comments older than a few days because the only one who will see them is the person I'm replying to. And if my comment is a correction or a clarification, the person I'm responding to may not take it well, so my comment hits 0 or even negative numbers, without the possibility of the general population correcting that (then again, without the risk of them further correcting me if I'm wrong). It's just not worth it.
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KajMagnus 2986 days ago
Here's a Reddit & HN like discussion system (I'm developing it) that mitigates? (solves?) the problem with Reddit & HN that [only the one you reply to see your comment]:

https://www.talkyard.io/-32/how-hacker-news-can-be-improved-...

Because: 1) when you post a comment, the topic bumps to the top of the topic list. Like a normal forum. 2) inside the topic, people quickly find the recent comments, via the sidebar (as shown in the video "Finding new comments").

(B.t.w. agree that Reddit & HN feel ephemeral. I remember maybe 2 usernames here at HN, and 2 at Reddit, although having spent a lot more time here, than what I've done at Discoure's forum — nevertheless I remember many more people over at Discourse.)

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icc97 2986 days ago
Stack Overflow has the 'active' sorting. This is similar to bumping a topic with any activity to the top. This is the default as opposed to new.

The mentions there work nicely too, I never get swamped with inbox messages, you can only mention one person in a comment, so there's no @channel nonsense as with Slack.

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