Ask HN: How do I get informed about late replies?

28 points by DoctorOetker 7 years ago

Some of the threads and comments (by myself or others) are so profound or relevant to my interests that I would like to be kept up to date when a new comment is added. Over time it becomes infeasibly taxing to manually go through all of these by brute force. Am I missing an already existing feature on HN? A wishlist: 1) a general per user page with a chronologically ordered (recent first) list of replies downstream of any of my comments. 2) a means to mark/breakpoint/ set a watch on a specific comment (not necessarily mine) so that any immediate or downstream replies (depending on the breakpoint settings) end up on a similarily chronological ordering of replies triggering such a breakpoint. Of course also the ability to disable a breakpoint... 3) a help page specifying exactly the allowed syntax in comments, and explanation of some settings (I didn't know about the "dead" setting until someone pointed it out to me...

CGamesPlay 7 years ago

If you click on the `threads` link in the header it shows all of your recent comments, including any replies. It's definitely not what you asked for but it's built in to the site.

  • DoctorOetker 7 years ago

    thanks, I already knew about this one, and it seemed sufficient at first, but after a while you realize you will never be aware of highly "late" replies

lainon 7 years ago
  • DoctorOetker 7 years ago

    thanks this is very helpful, but I still wish I could mark a specific comment to trigger its replies to show up on a page inverse chronologically.

    hnreplies does not allow following replies to an insightful comment contributed by someone else though

    but again, thanks, this will already cover a lot of my concerns

  • DoctorOetker 7 years ago

    do you know if it is scraping HN, or HN provides a hook?

  • DoreenMichele 7 years ago

    This service stopped working for me recently, probably a few weeks back.

    YMMV.

    • DoctorOetker 7 years ago

      indeed, your reply did not get notified to me :(

      • DoreenMichele 7 years ago

        It's the second (that I know of) such free third-party notification system for HN to go defunct. If everyone whines about it enough, maybe someone will do a another one. ;)

        So thank you for posting your question. :)

        Edit; It occurs to me, you shouldn't have gotten a notification for my comment because I didn't reply to you. The previous service posted notifications of comments on your posts, plus replies to your comments. This one only notifies you of direct replies to your actual comments, not comments on your post.

        So that's not necessarily meaningful data that you don't have a notification of my comment above. Did you get one for this comment?

stevenicr 7 years ago

I would indeed enjoy a built in rss feed for replies on topics / threads I have found important.

I'd also like a link to a wiki or something that could be updated with more replies and new information about things perhaps also including links to other hn threads that have referenced / linked to the same.

So continued discussions could occur and extra info combined.

rss feed, email notification, sms maybe..

Not all threads, but some are of high interest to me for sure - and checking the myprofile-comments for new info is tedious, though used many times for me.