

Ask YC: How do you follow YC threads you enjoy? - bprater

Often, I find great stories and comments I enjoy here and plan to return to see more comments, but when I get back to the site -- I completely forget.<p>Do any of you have a simple technique (or even a script) for keeping an eye on posts you enjoy?
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bd
On the related note: how do you keep track of which comments are new since
your last visit of the thread?

HN/reddit system with comments jumping around based on votes makes it hard
just to quickly skim for differences.

Could there be a way to highlight not seen items? I found this a big help for
information overload on the sites that do it (e.g. Google Reader, Bloglines).

However, I couldn't figure out how to do it elegantly (i.e. not needing to
keep state on the server for each user) for prioritized threaded comments
systems like HN/reddit.

For updates of a single page it's easy, you just need to bake timestamps for
each item and page creation into HTML/JS and check them against the last page
timestamp stored in the cookie.

But this system breaks down for multiple pages, as each one would need own
cookie entry, otherwise any site visit would mark all new items as read.

That's btw MetaFilter's problem with highlighting new comments. Though there
it's easier to follow the conversation due to linear nature of comment system.

Maybe the solution could be to have some dual way of accessing comments? Like
prioritized threaded view for the first view and linear time ordered view for
subsequent following?

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transburgh
I agree about the comment movements but it has been discussed here before. It
would be nice to have the option to keep comments the way they are (moving) or
to view them based on the time they were left.

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issue9mm
If you know which comments on a page are new, then you also know which ones
are old. The easy answer is to just gray out the older posts (only remotely
challenging because the gray background of the page is about the color I WOULD
have suggested for old comment text) -- and just leave the new comments as
they are.

That allows you to easily skim the page for new content, while still allowing
you to see the new posts in context.

A Digg-style collapse would also probably work, but for some reason, I see
grayed out text more in line with the ycombinator mantra.

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pg
Should I add some kind of feature for this?

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snprbob86
Starred conversations seems like an appropriate solution.

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bprater
I really like this idea too, just like stars in Gmail. A star would appear
next to the article name in the index page (and detail page). One click and a
star next to the article.

Works like a charm in Gmail. No need to even float stars to the top, just
allow the user to filter only starred articles with one click.

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aston
I make a post in it, then check on my "threads" page (and my post's parent)
every now and then. I'm doing it now, for example.

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noelchurchill
Yep this is what I do too.

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jamesbritt
Same here. Someone wrote a Web ap that would sort of do this for you, and emit
an RSS feed (It think), but it would create an entry for each up or down vote,
which was not that useful to me.

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twism
I built a little app for this...

<http://ycfeeds.com/feed/comments-on-item?item=396186>

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rfunduk
My technique is super low-tech. In my bookmarks bar, positioned conveniently
below the site's favicon, I have a folder which is called "For Later". Into
this folder I drop stuff I'll want to come back to at some point. Then (and
here's the super part of my super low-tech claim), when I'm done with it I
move it to another folder called "x" which I periodically delete and re-
create.

This works everywhere with no extensions or anything, I use Foxmarks to sync
the bookmarks themselves between machines (which you could skip if you only
used the one machine), that's it.

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yters
Let's hear it for low tech. I like it when people are able to chain existing,
simple tools; instead of engineering a new kludge.

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noodle
yeah, i vote them up. there's a link in your profile that shows your saved
stuff.

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theantidote
Concurred. It took me a while to find that saved thing though, it should be
more prominent.

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brett
It used to be in the menu.

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catone
To be honest, I usually just keep the thread open in a tab for a few hours
until things die down. That said, I generally only comment on a handful of
threads per week, so that's a manageable system for me. For those of you who
participate more, I think that wouldn't work so well.

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vlad
I upvote articles that I don't have time to read, but want to keep track of.
I've been doing this for at least a year, since the /saved?id=vlad feature
came out (articles a user upvotes are available via that suffix to the url.)

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transburgh
I keep it in Google Reader and just revisit the next time I go through the
feed.

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danw
Bookmark to instapaper. Come back and read later

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Fuca
readitlater addon on firefox

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oakmac
F5

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qqq
leave it open in a tab, refresh later.

