Ask HN: What about email alerts on a per-thread basis?

1 points by owkaye 15 years ago | 7 comments

Will HN ever support email notices to people who start threads or post to threads ... to alert them that new messages have been posted?

If not, what about supporting individual RSS feeds for each thread we want to track or intend to participate in?

Does anyone else see the value in features like these, or is it just me?

owkaye 15 years ago |

I just received my first email notice from notifo and it's still not clear to me when I will (and will not) receive email notices at HN:

Will I get them ONLY when someone replies to a specific post I've made?

Will I get them when someone posts a reply in a thread I've created, even though the reply is to someone else's post instead of to mine?

Will I get them when someone posts a reply to someone else in a thread that someone else has created?

These are just a few of the questions that remain unanswered until I do some more testing ... but my current suspicion is that notifo cannot notify me unless the post is a direct reply to one of my posts.

If this is true it means I will NOT get a notice -- even in a thread I created -- when a reply is made to someone else's post.

And if this is the case it will fail to notify me of all the HN activity I want to be notified about.

pasbesoin 15 years ago |

Have a look at the Notifo field in your profile. Then do something like:

https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Anews....

You will received notifications of replies -- to your comments, at least; I presume also to posts/threads that you start.

EDIT: I should add that there is an email notification option (as opposed to IM, SMS, or whatever). You may have to look a bit on the Notifo site to find it, IIRC.

owkaye 15 years ago | |

Well, I didn't have any idea what that "notifo" term meant ... and in fact I still don't.

So you're suggesting that the blank notifo field in my profile, with no explanation of how to use it or what it does, might actually send me an email if I enter the proper URL and make the appropriate changes on the notifo website?

For starters the "notifo" label on the blank field might be better as a link to the notifo website. At least then we would have a clue about where to begin to possibly learn enough to enable simple notifications for the threads we start or want to follow.

I hate to say it but this is about the worst implementation of a notification system I have ever seen in my life. Why not just put a 'notices' link at the top or bottom of every thread page when a visitor is logged in? Then when I click it, take me to a page that allows me to manage my notification subscriptions in a simple, straightforward and OBVIOUS manner?

pasbesoin 15 years ago | | |

Well, I didn't make it. :-)

pg -- in my anecdotal observation -- tends to like to use YC companies' technology where he can. It's a bit of promotion, and it saves him from doing the work himself -- while keeping HN as minimal/core-function as possible.

At the time Notifo was added, there were a bunch of threads. I think that, since that time, there's a bit of "you should be able to figure this out" involved.

What I provided was essentially a pointer to relevant search terms.

I agree, it's not the clearest thing in the world. Again, it's not my baby.

EDIT: I should add that I'm just not up to a lengthier explanation / set of instructions, right now. Old threads have some. So, I hope the bit of a reply that I could cobble together, helps.