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Ask HN: How do HN pros keep track of responses to their comments?

7 points by wofo ↗ HN
I have been lurking HN for years, sometimes submitting articles yet very rarely engaging in comments. What stops me from commenting, and from reacting to other people's comments, is the fact that the chances of starting a conversation are so low (i.e. the person I am replying to may never know I wrote something, and if they somehow do reply I'm probably not going to see it unless I explicitly go back to check).

Is there anything I'm missing?

12 comments

[ 1035 ms ] story [ 2965 ms ] thread
jgrahamc
I hit the threads button from time to time. I don't get involved in long discussions---life is too short.
wofo
Thanks! Somehow I had never noticed the "threads" menu item until now :)
TheAdamist
Click your name on the top right for your profile age, then click comments.

It will even include replies to your comments on that page.

smoldesu
I don't. It's too much of a hassle. If you're really pedantic about this stuff, you can pipe comment replies into an RSS feed, but interacting with those types of people in the past has been... annoying, to say the least.
rgoulter
> What stops me from commenting, and from reacting to other people's comments, is the fact that the chances of starting a conversation are so low

In person, a conversation is personal like this.

In this discussion forum, it's common to see a chain of replies in discussion/disagreement where each replier is a different person. -- The conversation is continuous in its content, not necessarily by who is replying.

People reading comments later will gain from a good comment/discussion, and may be able to offer a good reply in turn.

More people read than comment, so I'd encourage you to leave a good comment anyway.

bombcar
You can use threads to watch others just by changing the id, so if you want to find where dang is:

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang

(Of course the most common use is to see where you commented, but I rarely go beyond one page)

johnsonjo
+1 and just so other people know there is also a link at the top of the page on HN for your own threads labeled "threads"
anon2020dot00
That's intentional like someone else said in this thread. It helps to reduce flame-wars and personal attacks.

React instead to the post in question or if reacting to a comment, write a reply for the whole HN community instead of just targeting one person.