“@dang” doesn’t do anything on HN. Emailing the mods using the footer Contact link is the fastest way – and the only certain way – to get the mod team’s attention (including but not limited to dang).
I think he does have a script checking for mentions because he does tend to reply to <at>dang, which is fairly easy to set up even if no infra on hn itself supports it.
There are more mods than just dang. Emailing the contact address notifies all of them, and lets them make more rapid fixes, than depending on one single person to write tooling for what you describe.
If mentioning dang does work, why didn’t it work for the forty-five minutes prior to my reply, and then work five minutes after?
I’ve emailed the mods tens of times over the years to point out a thread that has a correction, or that I think dang may want to reply to, without saying that I’ve done so. Did I do so this time? (Y/N)
Assigning meaning to the timing is inappropriate, as it disregards the possibility of coincidence (he found the thread organically), unstated actions (someone emailed the mods), and/or human distraction (he was at lunch) by the however-notified dang.
I also view it as impolite to try using @dang to burden all mod duties onto one person rather than to a team of mods. Whether it works or not, it’s evidence of site users setting dang up in their minds as a single point of failure – either because they think it’s the only way, or for the convenience of not having to write a two sentence email to the mod team. That irks me, and so I occasionally post a reminder about the contact form, phrased to allow for the cases where the @ is just a learned behavior and they just don’t know about the contact link in the footer yet.
