
Ask HN: How do you consume new comments on an HN post? - fletchowns
So it&#x27;s early in the afternoon and I see an interesting post on HN. After looking at the link, I head to the comments section to see what people are discussing. There&#x27;s lots of good stuff in there as usual, so I end up reading ~40 or so comments.<p>Later in the evening, I see that the post is up to 80 comments. How come there isn&#x27;t an easy way to read the new comments? I have to look at all the comments I already read and figure out what&#x27;s new based on kinda guessing at timestamps and stuff. Surely I can&#x27;t be the only one that finds this experience cumbersome?
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insin
I use this user script to show how many new comments there are, highlight new
comments and auto-collapse threads without new comments since the last visit
to a story:
[https://github.com/insin/greasemonkey/blob/master/hncommentt...](https://github.com/insin/greasemonkey/blob/master/hncommenttrees.user.js)

A live version of the same functionality is also implemented in my read-only
Firebase API client: [http://insin.github.io/react-
hn](http://insin.github.io/react-hn)

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jaredsohn
Searching for 'minutes ago' or 'hours ago' can help.

In the past, I have used a Chrome extension that would indicate which comments
were new.

Because of this thread, I looked for installed extensions and see that I was
thinking of Hacker News Enhancement Suite. (It shows a line going down to the
left of comments newer than what you last saw.)
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-
enhanc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-
enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm?hl=en)

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Mz
I am probably a statisical outlier for how I interact with the site. I often
do not bother to look for "newest" coments.

I use notifyhn, so: If I posted the article in question, most of the time, I
will get emails notifying me of "top level" comments but not replies to them.
If I commented in the discussion, most of the time, I get emails telling me
oif new replies. I typically am interested in reading all of those new
replies.

If I neither posted it nor commented in it, well, not all new comments are
equally valuable. Stuff that floats to the top is more likely to add value.
Stuff towards the bottom is often inane and does not merit more than a cursory
sampling to see if the overall discussion down there is worth delving into.

I also check the new comments page a lot. If I see something intriguing there,
I will click "parent" and follow it up. That has a pretty good track record.

If it is an excellent topic with an excellent discussion, assuming I have the
time, I am fine with starting at the top and reading through the whole thing,
even though it means rereading some stuff, in order to see comments in
context.

If I really just want to see new stuff in a discussion I read portions of
previoiusly, I check the time stamps. It isn't that hard if it is less than a
day old. After that, time stamps get less useful.

------
pavornyoh
>Surely I can't be the only one that finds this experience cumbersome?

No, not just you. I consider myself a newbie on the board and often have to
look at the "time" the comment was posted to see it is new.

FWIW, Here is what is on my Wishlist/what I hope the future holds for HN.. Eh,
the audacity of me but here we go;

1) Just like how a new person is shown in a "green color", maybe new comments
can be given a color also so once a user reads it under their profile it can
change to the regular color. That way, it is easier to know what is new on a
thread.

2)Every user based on rank should be assigned a color. To change a color in
addition to karma points. This particular idea of rank I got from myfico forum
as I contribute over there and it makes things very competitive although it is
a different kind of board. Their version of "karma" is kudos. Here is an
example of people with different titles and colors -
[http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-
Cards/bd-p/creditcard](http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-
Cards/bd-p/creditcard) FWIW, I am user Yes-Its-Me on that board.

------
krapp
There are a number of rough spots to the UX here. I tend to assume that pg
didn't care enough to add it and the current staff either don't have the time
or the inclination.

Although being able to sort a thread by latest comments shouldn't be
impossible in an application written in the Language of the Gods, but it might
be more difficult than anyone working on the site thinks it's worth. I
understand their reticence towards new features but not all added complexity
is a sign of feature creep. They are (at some point) adding at least a mobile
friendly layout and thread folding so maybe resorting or indicating new
comments might be in the pipeline too. If not, just adding proper timestamps
to the comments somewhere (even just as data attributes) would make it easier
for people to do it themselves through scripting.

Also, since the staff doesn't particularly like meta discussion this thread is
probably going to be sunk by the moderators pretty quickly.

~~~
nkurz
_Also, since the staff doesn 't particularly like meta discussion this thread
is probably going to be sunk by the moderators pretty quickly._

It's not meta if it's the topic of the post. If it's a problem, Dan will stop
by and tell us. I think usually it's user flags that sink such threads rather
than moderators.

 _If not, just adding proper timestamps to the comments somewhere (even just
as data attributes) would make it easier for people to do it themselves
through scripting._

The comment and article id's are assigned sequentially, and should already
work for ordering and time comparisons. I think this is what the various
browser extensions are using for this purpose.

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nkurz
The "hckr news" extension handles this well:
[http://hckrnews.com/about.html#extensions](http://hckrnews.com/about.html#extensions)

It highlights new comments on the
[http://news.ycombinator.com](http://news.ycombinator.com) pages, and shows
the number of unread comments on the alternate
[http://hckrnews.com](http://hckrnews.com) front page. It's available for
Safari and Chrome. The Chrome extension works fine for Opera (and likely other
Chromium based browsers).

~~~
fletchowns
Aww damn, I'm a die hard Firefox user!

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teneuros
Never start by saying "So".

