The rules governing @User comment replies are described at length, but don't address bounties.
- If I put a bounty on someone else's question, will I be notified of undirected comments?
- Can people notify me via @-replies even if my only involvement with the question is putting a bounty on it?
If the answer to one or both is no, could we get a new feature putting anyone with a bounty on a question on par with the question's author for the purposes of comment @-replies? Or, if not, at least add them to the list of @-reply targets to allow messaging them?
This was all prompted by this question from DanQ that had a bounty put on it by rabidsnail, presumably because she had the same problem. Once it showed up on the Featured Questions list, people asked for more information in comments. DanQ never responded, and may well not have cared about the question by that point. Presumably rabidsnail cared, but did she get any notification about the comments requesting more info? (I assume rabidsnail checked in on the question at some point, and obviously didn't add more info then, but maybe she would have had she known sooner.)
There's also the question of proper etiquette when elaborating on a question that's not yours, but that's beyond the scope of this question.