[babuskov]

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]

I 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.

[dopamean]

> 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]

This might be the most meta comment chain on HN.

[joatmon-snoo]

This entire thread itself is pretty meta :)

[dreamcompiler]

This reply is quite clever, but at the current nesting level, nobody will notice.

[boterock]

Unless it is the most upvoted comment

[mgiannopoulos]

I noticed dreamcompiler! And apparently there is a limit to the nesting of replies (which is why i’m replying to the parent comment) ?!

[cmroanirgo]

Agreed. 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.

[BOBOTWINSTON]

If 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]

I 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.

[nerflad]

My 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.

[vinceguidry]

I 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.

[hyperpape]

What is a BNBR ding? DuckDuckGo didn't turn anything up for me.

[petecooper]

>BNBR

Be Nice, Be Respectful

https://www.quora.com/What-is-Quoras-Be-Nice-Be-Respectful-p...

[psalminen]

"Be Nice, Be Respectful"[0]

[0] https://www.quora.com/What-is-Quoras-Be-Nice-Be-Respectful-p...

[anothergoogler]

Agreed, the "red envelope" of reddit is designed to elicit a visceral reaction.

[hiccuphippo]

The 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.

[christophilus]

Click 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]

Isn't that the same thing as "Threads" in the header?

[christophilus]

Whaat! Yes, it is. I’ve never clicked the “threads” link, it would seem.

[chasedehan]

Whoa! 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.

[xrisk]

I think the “threads” page fulfils that purpose.

[DoreenMichele]

Someone 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.

[glglwty]

4chan doesn't have reply notification either and I wonder if the theory applies there..

[westmeal]

Only if you post cats.

[hindsightbias]

And here I thought nobody replied because I was always right on this internets.

[joecasson]

I like this mentality. Notifications are inherently disruptive and can cause agitation by their mere existence.

[dangrossman]

I host http://hnreplies.com which provides comment reply notifications by email, FYI.

[AdmiralAsshat]

What happens if I sign up and then decide later I want to disconnect your service?

[perryprog]

There's a button at the bottom of each email to unsubscribe.

[yla92]

You should check out HN Replies (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.

[mindgam3]

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.

[maxxxxx]

"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.

[azhenley]

I agree completely. I use https://hnnotify.xyz/ which emails me periodically with all my new replies (other similar services exist, my friend happened to make this one).

[gymshoes]

I 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.

[jv22222]

This can also help with that (in part) - https://littlebirdie.io - if you plug your own username in there.

[zamber]

There's hnreplies.com for that ;).