It seems that icey did not think it was so harmless and wanted to inform the community in case any malice was involved. If this experiment was completely harmless I don't see why the contributor needed to contact so many people (as it seems they contacted quite a few active members from the comments) in order to perform it.
Knowing what the phishing in question was, yes, it was pretty harmless. Even if it was not, jacquesm would not risk his reputation in doing something malicious to the HN community, so this is a case where a private email might have done the same as this public notice.
I'm not saying anyone here did anything terrible, but usually when contacted privately you first respond privately, so this is a bit out of order. It's not like jacquesm wouldn't have listened to arguments about this, and so an immediate action in the form of this post is, well, just bad form.
Edit: jacquesm has come forth with it, so I've replaced "a contributor" with his username.
> Even if it was not, jacquesm would not risk his reputation in doing something malicious to the HN community,
Not intending to get into this specific debate, but that's precisely the wrong way to think. Well respected individuals with a good reputation risk their's every day. More importantly, for many, jacquesm is a faceless individual. How can you be certain he's the one who concocted this plan and it wasn't someone who fished out his information in order to utilize his reputation to gain something? Especially when this so-called "jacquesm" is trying to phish out information from the HN community, something that could hurt his reputation regardless of the intent.
I'm not suggesting he wasn't who he said he was, nor should be distrust him. Rather, we need to always be aware of what we trust (and an email from a friend is merely that, an email, not your friend).
Or, the reverse, exactly because it is known to quite a few members, if there were any malice in it that would have never happened. And then icey would not have been able to spill the beans.
