

Ask HN: Would you like a DM facility "in" HN? - ColinWright

Every now and again someone says something on HN and I&#x27;d like to reply out-of-channel, but they haven&#x27;t given their email address.  It would be convenient to have a service that lets me send a message to the directly without them having to leak their email address.<p>I envisage an opt-in service, where people register their email.  If I want to send them a DM I log in to the DM web site, enter their HN username, compose, and hit send. If the intended recipient is registered then the message is delivered from the central server to them via email.  They can reply similarly.<p>If they are not registered, the message is stored (for some time limit).  If they subsequently register, they can opt to have some or all messages delivered, or view them on the central site.<p>Would you use it?
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pg
There is one in HN. It's just not enabled, except for questions about YC
applications.

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ColinWright
Interesting.

* Under what circumstances would you enable it?

* On a scale of -10 to 10, how much would you support an external facility such as outlined?

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the_watcher
Wouldn't it being "opt-in" make it functionally the same as now? Where you can
opt-in to including an email address in your profile? And for those worried
about anonymity, it takes about 4 minutes to set up an anonymous email account
and set it to forward to your primary inbox. I'd guess that most on HN have
either an email that they are comfortable revealing publicly or an anonymous
one.

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ColinWright
Just looking to reduce the friction. Clicking a link, typing in your email
address, clicking "GO", it much easier than setting up an anonymous account.
The facility could also allow one-click blocking of users, and can't be
harvested. I have to change the email address in my profile reasonably often
as it regularly gets harvested and transferred to spam lists.

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pasbesoin
DM messaging might open HN up to all sorts of attention it would rather not
have.

Right now, (almost) all communication on it is public. If some three letter
authority wants to know what's going on, they can just browse.

I'm not particularly defending the behaviour of three letter authorities.
Rather, I'm pointing out one implication that comes to mind. (PG could talk to
the Reddit people, for one -- our could he? -- to learn what their experience
has been with DM's that exist under a similar platform model.)

As it stands, I see HN as a fairly minimal and absolute model of "opt in". If
you want to be available for private messages, you get and display an email
address. Or a URL. Or whatever. What that point of contact is and how it
relates to your life, is up to you.

If you don't want to field private messages, for whatever reason, you just go
with the status quo. No need to actively filter them out, nor to explain that
no, you never read crazy_joes message or that at least you didn't take him/her
seriously.

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mattwritescode
No I would not like it.

