The need for notifications is just a symptom of an idiotic system overall.
When was the last time that a company offered you to notify you by (snail) mail when there was a letter available for you to pick up at their headquarters?
It's a workaround for having to poll multiple event (posting) sources. Which only arises because we have multiple event sources. Which is completely unnecessary, technically. (I am talking about the user interface here, of course - it's perfectly fine to have the software poll multiple sources, or, even better, to have some protocol-level notification/push mechanism, of course, but the user should not ever have to deal with it.)
That also does not mean that integrating with email, say, is necessarily a bad idea - but not in order to tell a human that they should poll some event source, but as an interface medium for the actual discussion (that is, essentially as a mailing list). e-mail supports much of the necessary basic functionality, and it's also an existing infrastructure that give the user one UI of their choice for all communication partners.
HN notify is kind of an external plugin... But considering that i did apply to means that yes, notification is important. But over-bombardment of notifications can be annoying
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While going through this discussion, I realized HN does not have any form of notification system.
How important is notification for an effective discussion platform?
The need for notifications is just a symptom of an idiotic system overall.
When was the last time that a company offered you to notify you by (snail) mail when there was a letter available for you to pick up at their headquarters?
It's a workaround for having to poll multiple event (posting) sources. Which only arises because we have multiple event sources. Which is completely unnecessary, technically. (I am talking about the user interface here, of course - it's perfectly fine to have the software poll multiple sources, or, even better, to have some protocol-level notification/push mechanism, of course, but the user should not ever have to deal with it.)
That also does not mean that integrating with email, say, is necessarily a bad idea - but not in order to tell a human that they should poll some event source, but as an interface medium for the actual discussion (that is, essentially as a mailing list). e-mail supports much of the necessary basic functionality, and it's also an existing infrastructure that give the user one UI of their choice for all communication partners.
HN notify is kind of an external plugin... But considering that i did apply to means that yes, notification is important. But over-bombardment of notifications can be annoying
Yes. Another feature which is tough to design, such that it is not over annoying and yet solves the purpose. :)