Tell HN: Make sure you can be contacted as described on your user page

[tshtf]

I tried this evening to contact a user by the information on his/her user page, and it didn't work. I just wanted to write this as a reminder to all to check your contact information and make sure that others can easily contact you by that information.

[bigmac]

Or, some enterprising Arc programmer could add inboxes to HN and submit the patch to pg. I'm quite fond of using that feature on reddit. Although it is used somewhat rarely, it comes in handy when I do need it.

[ig1 → bigmac]

I believe pg has said in the past that not including mailbox features was a design choice rather than a "don't have time to do it" issue.

[gojomo → ig1]

For sites that don't want the overhead of full user-to-user messaging, I've wondered if it would make sense to have a single kind of private form message: "I'd like to talk, here's my contact info."

It'd be a single tick to send to someone, and they'd decide what to do from there -- perhaps just clear the 'contact requested' flag with a single tick of their own.

[ig1 → gojomo]

I've noticed formspring is being used for this purpose on some forums that don't offer direct messaging.

[ggchappell → bigmac]

> Or, some enterprising Arc programmer could add inboxes to HN ....

If this is done, then getting an inbox should be opt-in. Most of us already have enough things we have to check. We may not want another.

[wlievens → bigmac]

It could just forward to your email.

[garply → bigmac]

If the community would collectively pay me for this feature and pg would agree to accept the patch, I'd do it.

[seiji]

Also, once again: the email field is not public. Write contact information in the profile field.

[tshtf → seiji]

And please verify that the information in your contact field yields a working email address! That was the point of this post.

[jacquesm]

What makes you think it didn't work ?

If someone does not reply that does not mean your communication was not received. No answer is also an answer...

Your own profile lists an email address but no name, last name, information about you nor any other info.

Maybe give the good example and flesh out your profile a bit ?

[tshtf → jacquesm]

A RCPT failed from an email address is a good indication.

[jhrobert → tshtf]

OMG! Is there a way to fake these?

[zackattack → jhrobert]

why is he being downvoted? not cool. guess what? it's also a tremendous BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY.

what is pg's #1 rule? build something SOMEBODY LOVES? don't you think jhrobert would be EXCITED if this was offered a service?

he's getting excited about a cool technical, (business) and social hack

jhrobert, of course it's possible to fake this. do i personally know how? my guess is copy/paste the text and fake the email headers. could you make money offering it as a service? yes.

[jhrobert → zackattack]

Humm... I am using gmail, I don't think I can that easely forge a fake....

However, I can fake an auto-responder easely...

[tjpick]

There's plenty of good reasons not to make it easy for random internet strangers to contact you.

It's hacker news, not stalker news.

[jacobolus → tjpick]

Why would you list wrong contact info? That seems pretty counterproductive.

[tjpick → jacobolus]

It's probably not malicious. The dude just probably forgot to update it. Or was getting too much spam and started blocking a bunch of stuff. Or made a typo.

I was just saying that not everyone has to let themselves be contacted. I didn't say you should post misinformation.

[zackattack → jacobolus]

maybe if you are posting under an alias and want to throw people off the scent? it's emotionally useful to post, and sometimes internet sleuths like to track down anons. hopefully nobody's posting disinformation but didn't someone less than a year ago come out with a script that tried to guess the writer of some text based on their punctuation, capitalization, blah blah blah parameters?

meh.