I may be missing something, but the only way I have come across to see whether anyone has replies to any of my comments is:
1. Click user name (top right) 2. Click "comments" (4th link from the bottom) 3. Refresh periodically and try to notice whether any new comments have arrived that I haven't seen.
In practice for me I only remember to even do step 1 maybe every few weeks or months, so I never really get to participate in actual realtime-ish conversations.
People often talk about how good the discussions are on HN, so I wonder if I'm missing a better way? This seems really hard and clunky.
What's good about the HN discussion format is its mostly people "adding on" to what someone else said, not classic back and forth discussing. That's actually discouraged (the deeper a thread goes, the longer the delay before you can reply). And it's generally great. Internet debates suck.
Don't debate, add on.
What makes the conversations good is not so much that you get to engage in good conversations but you get to see and read some very good conversations, from what I have seen few regularly engage in good conversations on HN and when they do it is just a matter of luck, schedules and knowledge line up or it is actually many people each only adding one or two comments at most. There is a wealth of good conversations on the site but the extended back and forth between two people is not common, everyone just joins in where they can or when impulse over rules reason.
HN is not designed for real-time conversations, and trying to use it for that is discouraged. If you want real-time conversations - then find a site which is designed for and encourages them.
For example, yours would be: https://hnrss.org/replies?id=stevage
Pop that in an RSS reader and enjoy notifications for anyone who replies to your comments.
Unlike many forums, I actually prefer HN for the way it is.
Honestly it's probably half better you all have some reprieve from my thoughts. Making it so the bullshit just constantly overruns me & is something I cannot at all deal with, don't have the tokens to respond to. Let the noise flood us out! But even if I am in one of those zones of good grace/non-rate-limitimg - which I think describes most of my behavior well - it's still the same. Check a couple pages of replies. Miss anything way further back.
Being absurdly rate limited for much of my life here does make me think I need a better client experience though. Where how I handle conversations really needs to be an iterable experience. Newsgroups keep seeming like by far the most obvious peer, the intermediary standard that I'd want as model for this place.
I come here largely to avoid people that want to “have conversations”
The rest of the community does not want to read your conversations, they are interested in good information.. and the only way to have lots of good information is to get rid of the cruft.
Or put another way, the discussions are good because back and forth is discouraged.
When you make a comment you should ask yourself whether this benefits the community.
If it doesn’t then you want to hold off on those type of comments.
I press "threads" and look through sometimes.
divorced of "who said it" the "discussions are good on HN" is that the flow of meaning and lessons I take from comment threads in HN are good and enlightening.
Sometimes the good is "they are well written"
Sometimes the good is "they are well reasoned"
Sometimes the good is "I learned something"
Sometimes the good is "I was entertained" ("are you not entertained" in a Russell Crowe 'Gladiator' voice...)
Sometimes, all 4