HACKER Q&A
📣 zynker

Should HN users have a way to contact others on HN?


The HN crowd is super diverse, on top of that story comments often reveal there are so many interesting people here.

I often think I'd love to engage with some of them.

I know some users choose to add contact details/personal site in their profile, but unfortunately most don't.

Should HN have an option to send a message between its users?

  👤 bell-cot Accepted Answer ✓
No. HN is a News site.

For users who want to be contacted (by pretty much anyone - let's not pretend that HN is some ultra-exclusive club), it's trivial to add contact details to their User.About text - details for platforms they're already on, know & like the features of, etc.

For user who don't, the default is perfect.

For DanG & Co., any "users can contact each other, via HN" feature is a boatload more work. Even if they could just install OpenSourcePackage for that - it'll still need a bunch of hardware infra. Then there's the 1e13 ways in which some users can and will misbehave, via any meaningful chat/message/whatever feature. All of which DanG & Co. would be stuck playing AdminNannyPolice for.

👤 dieselgate
I personally don't want the feature and am glad it does not exist on HN. On other forums where it does exist I don't use it. It's good people can put contact info of their choosing in the bio etc.
👤 night-rider
I added an e-mail address in my bio to an older account I had on here, encouraging people to cold e-mail me. I got one e-mail in the span of six years, and the e-mail was short and sweet. Someone just wanted to thank me for getting their SaaS product on the HN front page. I still check their progress to this day. I literally changed the course of someone's life by submitting a random link.
👤 ssss11
Sounds like a spam door
👤 pyeri
It should be left up to them users to post a linkedin or github on their profile should they choose to, the present way works good I think.
👤 The-Old-Hacker
Will that be Zynk or you personally "engaging" with HN members?
👤 zynker
One can also have an opt-out of contact feature.