But still… It does often feel too ephemeral. I sometimes wish I were able to easily keep track of what some people are posting on here and interact more directly. It’s easy enough to sort of keep up with some of the more prolific accounts because they’re often almost hard to avoid, but that’s about it.
As an example, I ran into a few people in a thread once that live nearby (statistically fairly unlikely!) and there was talk of meeting up, but that was the end of it, because how else could we coordinate? I can’t even find that thread now, but I’m still up for some beers, gorge residents!
Anyway, sorry, I’m rambling. Really I was just wondering if anyone has any good tools for following other HN users’ activity.
i like that the conversation is mostly between hn readers and the article they're commenting on, with crosstalk very much being secondary.
i would really hate hn becomming a social network. but that's me, i happen to hate those things.
We already have websites with these mechanics, notably Twitter. I don’t think we need to introduce them in HN comments.
As much as I'd love a feature to follow a person like that, I suspect many of these people are the types that probably would be less likely to participate if they knew people were following them and I want to respect that and their privacy. Instead I've tried to remember to always favorite comments that stand out to me which I periodically revisit because they are like little nuggets of wisdom that I can continuously relearn from.
Is that the kind of thing?
Makes quick work of comment threads. And if the people you’re following, also use hackers smacker, then their friends and foes will also be shown as side-by-side orbs.
but no way youre gonna be able to get hn denizens to doxx their locations if they dont opt in even if they would love to meet and live next door