Tell HN: Please add a way for people to contact you in your profile
Yet it seems that many users don't provide any way for people to contact them, so these serendipitous opportunities to connect with like-minded humans never happen, and it's such a shame.
I know that I could beg our @dang to act as intermediary and contact the user in question on my behalf, but he's too busy and valuable to turn into a glorified phone operator :-)
So, unless you want to remain unreachable, please add an email, an X profile, a phone number, something people can use to contact and discuss "face to face" with you. You never know which door it might open for you.
In these days of anonymous cowards on the internet shouting at each other, having a discussion with a real human stranger by email feels good, and personally I truly treasure the few HN users that have written me over the years about comments I posted, and you might too.
He would not do that. If people do not wish to be contacted outside of HN they leave their contact information out of the profile. I personally like that I have the option and to keep conversations here. If something was urgent I can create a throw-away email and temporarily list it in my profile, then remove it.
I would suggest that if people opt to share contact info in their profile, they should use a canary address that can be discarded without causing grief as there are some unhinged lurkers. I see them planning raids on this site from other sites from time to time.
The day I'm afraid of Internet trolls finding my email is the day I leave the Internet forever.
I have no argument with anyone who prefers to remain anonymous, but the negative consequences you described haven't materialized for me.
Recently, I found it creepy that someone actually found me elsewhere on the internet because they got upset with something I said on here, then were trailing my fairly well manicured online presence for ad hominems to use here. I could see it in my analytics logs. I found it pretty weird, so I for one wouldn’t want any more of my contact details available here, where I’m free to say whatever I want and let the community upvote or downvote it.
if you want to contact somebody just make the move, ask in a comment
Btw: I suggest to everybody using these tools (external to ycombinator.com) to use email aliases instead of their real email, of course
Oh my god no. I intentionally am uncontactable on here and I’m sure that’s true for many others. I don’t want HN people to connect with me, open doors, etc. It may surprise some folks, but some of us don’t give a shit about networking, hustling, etc. via online message boards.
For all the high quality tech people on here, there seems to be a similar number of hucksters, get-rich-quick people, life-optimization-influencers, technical dilettantes, and other types I actively would like to avoid ever being contacted by. If the admins ever facilitate piercing that anonymity that would kill this site forever for me.
Then don't add an email to your profile.
I have been on this site 10 years more than you, and I have yet to be contacted by a scammer, con artist or whatever else you are afraid of, FWIW. Not everyone is out to scam their fellow neighbour.
Again, no one is forcing you to become contactable.
The response to this bit is a little surprising. It's really not that uncommon for a platform operator to forward the rare message between users - even Github does this (I've requested they forward several messages to users in regards to acquiring particular usernames)
The idea is if you want people to contact you, add an email, you maybe forgot to. If you don't want to, move along, nothing to see here.
I think that unless you’re going to reach people daily, it’s probably okay to find a recent comment of a user and try to explain your ideas and communicate under it. Worst case they’ll politely pretend being offline.
Most of us don't want to be contacted on HN, we just want to discuss randomly in comments, that's it!