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by krapp 740 days ago
None of those things are inherently problems with threaded conversations either. Hacker News is designed to discourage long-term engagement because the quality of conversation drops and the likelihood of flamewars increases over time. It's just a matter of implementation design and goals.
2 comments
dsr_ 740 days ago
I would argue that the quality of conversation drops and flamewars increase because HN is discouraging long-term engagement with an article.

Threading, new-only, relevant context displayed systems without point systems but with personal killfiles encourage discussion and viewing other participants as people.

What HN has makes only a relative handful of high-frequency commentators visible as people; everyone else is marginalized.

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ngrilly 740 days ago
> Threading, new-only, relevant context displayed systems without point systems but with personal killfiles encourage discussion and viewing other participants as people.

What do you mean by "new-only"? And how would you show relevant context with personal killfiles and without a point system? :)

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ngrilly 740 days ago
How would you solve the problem of keeping track of new comments in the HN model (threaded), assuming you'd like the conversation to continue over a few days or weeks?

I think the HN model is superior in almost every ways, except when it comes to following new comments, which is painful.

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krapp 740 days ago
I have a browser plugin that does it - when a thread I've read has new comments, it shows the number of new comments and highlights them in the thread. HN could also have some way to inform someone of new comments. Literally HN should just do what Reddit does, because this is not an issue there.

Of course, the phrase "do what Reddit does" is blasphemy here, so I'd suggest finding a plugin or a third party service like hnreplies[0] or just put up with the pain. Or do what most people do, resign yourself to forgetting about a conversation as soon as it drops off of your threads page.

[0]https://hnreplies.com/

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ngrilly 736 days ago
Agreed, Reddit's solution works quite well. And yes, hnreplies.com is very useful (I already use it).
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