
Can you private message peeps on Hacker News? - trixjo
Can you private message peeps on Hacker News?
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dschobel
No, IIRC pg asked once and some people said they didn't want yet another
messaging system to check.

Personally I think it would be great because a) not everybody remembers to
leave contact information and b) you get the instant context and can forgo the
"hey, I'm not a stalker but I thought you wrote something interesting on HN"

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alecst
Having my news.yc and reddit lives linked to email would be chaos. The
additional messaging system to check would be _more_ convenient -- not
inconvenient.

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mattwdelong
Those who want to be contacted should probably just leave their email address
or preferred method of contact. It takes just as much effort to use an email
client as does using a messaging system; the only difference is one would be
checked on a regular basis, the other, not so much. Plus, as mentioned, people
don't want yet another inbox to check. For those who don't drop a link to
their homepage or list their email address, I just assume they're not
interested in communication.

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NathanKP
I would add my email address to my profile if there was some way to build in
spam protection such as re-Captcha's mail hide tool:

<http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/>

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jhancock
My primary email address and several secondary addresses are public in easy to
find spots on the web, including my HN profile. All these addresses use gmail
and I am not having a problem with spam.

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rdl
I would really like it, especially if it defaulted to "off", and you could set
certain account age, karma, or karma-per-last-timeperiod thresholds for people
to contact you. Even if messages just got forwarded on to email vs. a mailbox
on the site.

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mahmud
The road to BBcode and smileys is paved with site-specific messaging and
karmic business rules engines.

Just add an email address to your profile, like everyone else who is
interested in meeting new people.

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cmelbye
Something like this would be really nice, even if it's just something like how
Wikipedia does it:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:EmailUser/Jimbo_Wales> (You'll need an
account to visit that page.)

It sends an email on behalf of the user, and the recipient can reply back to
the user via email (the sender's email address appears in the From: field.)

It works pretty well there, and there could be a karma threshold and a setting
to disable it here on HN if it were to be implemented.

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ars
No need for a private message area.

But it would be nice if yc would email people on your behalf. Most people do
not think of adding their email address to the profile area.

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jacquesm
So, how would YC magically come up with that email address to use if you
didn't put one in your profile ?

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alanthonyc
I think he means the "About" section, which is publicly viewable as opposed to
the "Email" field, which only the admins can see.

~~~
ars
Yes.

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tptacek
Put your contact info in your profile, check the profiles of people you want
to talk to, and get on with your life. =)

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prakash
YC peeps can message each other, not open to everyone.

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telemachos
I don't think so. Some people put emails or websites in their profile.

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wglb
I would personally not like to see this. Let's not.

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pclark
email

