Perhaps, in the spirit of "hacker" "news", one could write a script to check for replies and then notify us via email or something.

You could even possibly add in functionality to respond via email...

On the one hand, it is nice to not have some of these drive-engagement features... on the other hand, I genuinely want to engage with HN posters!

Agreed. In that case, maybe we just have to make sure to schedule dedicated time for HN usage. Probably better for us to keep things like this manual :-).

Also, it gives us time to edit/delete our comments like a ninja!