Ask HN: Why doesn’t HN have notifications?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20127221

by ryeguy_24 • 7 years ago

5 5 7 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I love the conversation and debate that goes on here but I don’t always go back to check if people responded to my comments. Wouldn’t comment notifications be a really helpful feature of HN?

_lffv• 7 years ago

Yes, but HN is a zero-distraction distraction: It's a workplace procrastination tool that doesn't let the user veer too far from their work. You can see this in the anti-procrast settings and the lack of any advertising here (both of which are very nice features I use regularly). If HN had notifications it'd lead on a slippery slope to HN being a social network instead of a news aggregator, and I don't think anybody wants that.

ramon• 7 years ago

This exists already, make sure to google it. http://www.hnreplies.com/

kazinator• 7 years ago

That's a third-party site though. If HN did a very simple thing: publish some data in RSS feed format, then an RSS reader (e.g. one living in your browser as an extension) would provide a notification interface.

whb07• 7 years ago

Build your own:

https://github.com/HackerNews/API

zzo38computer• 7 years ago

I would prefer it if the API exposed the messages in the input format rather than HTML format.

Ask HN: Why doesn’t HN have notifications?

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