Well, to be honest, I have deep-scripted accessing HN, but I tend only to use it when doing big data crunching on trends and similar. When providing cross-references I've usually just put the IDs - actually counting points, comments and age is something I've not done for a while.
Don't think I'll bother again, I get enough grief and hate-mail just from trying to point people at earlier conversations.
I really appreciate it when earlier conversations are pointed to. (The additional points/comments/age numbers are wonderful, too, if you feel up to providing them.)
I wonder if a bot could be written to automate this? There are lots of horrible reasons one could have for writing a HN comment bot, so I'm hesitant to even suggest it, but this seems like a really useful/good bot.
Actually, I can't tell you how many times a HN comment like yours has turned me on to an ultra-valuable related discussion that I would never have seen or thought to look for.
So don't let negative comments (perceived or actual) speak for us silent appreciaters!
I won't post the unpleasant emails - I'd have to go and find them and I'm not inclined to re-read them. You can read some dissenting opinions, and a reasonably civilized discussion here:
Came here to post this, except I was going to suggest it be built into HN itself and be in a section at the top of the comment page, perhaps between the link and the comment box. A way to suggest/add the links to the box would be good too (maybe mods + the submitter could have control of which links show up via this system)
