Comment by porcoda | Hacker News Reader

Comment by porcoda | Hacker News Reader

> I know that I could beg our @dang to act as intermediary and contact the user in question on my behalf, but he's too busy and valuable to turn into a glorified phone operator :-)

Oh my god no. I intentionally am uncontactable on here and I’m sure that’s true for many others. I don’t want HN people to connect with me, open doors, etc. It may surprise some folks, but some of us don’t give a shit about networking, hustling, etc. via online message boards.

For all the high quality tech people on here, there seems to be a similar number of hucksters, get-rich-quick people, life-optimization-influencers, technical dilettantes, and other types I actively would like to avoid ever being contacted by. If the admins ever facilitate piercing that anonymity that would kill this site forever for me.

In OPs defense, this sounds like an optional take. I do not think anyone is forcing you to commit to changes. He is simply proposing a connect channel with folks that want to sync up or continue on subject matter content.

> Oh my god no. I intentionally am uncontactable on here and I’m sure that’s true for many others.

Then don't add an email to your profile.

I have been on this site 10 years more than you, and I have yet to be contacted by a scammer, con artist or whatever else you are afraid of, FWIW. Not everyone is out to scam their fellow neighbour.

Again, no one is forcing you to become contactable.

So people who don’t want to be contacted by others don’t get an option for password recovery? Interesting perspective…

Adding your email to HN and adding it to your public profile are different things, you can add your email without make it public.

OP‘s idea was that HN‘s admins use the private/non-public email field in the profile to play middleman.

I have received multiple emails that were initiated by my email in HN. Most of them were legitimate contacts related to job positions or participating in open source projects but a good 20% that I didn't engage were probably scams.

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