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

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...

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.

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 FWIW, I am user Yes-Its-Me on that board.

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.

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.

It highlights new comments on the http://news.ycombinator.com pages, and shows the number of unread comments on the alternate 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).