Request HN: please add your email to your profile | Hacker News Reader

Request HN: please add your email to your profile

15 pointskgermino10 comments

Just a reminder that anything typed into the email field is not publicly visible (edit: not visible to anyone except pg and a few other admins) so please put your email address into the about field of your profile. This way it is visible to other HNers so that they can contact you. Thanks.

Click on your username in the upper-right corner of your browser and add your email address to the about field.

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May i ask what your argument is for requesting this?

I didn't realize that there was no "pass through" contact link, so maybe that should be the target of your request.

It's been pretty useful before. Wanting to contact other HN'ers about specific things is fairly common and there's no private messaging system. I agree that it would help if PG could add a contact link, but he seems a bit busy lately.

It's optional for a reason. If people want to give away that information, they will.

My experience has been that a lot of people don't realize that the email field in their profile is hidden except to pg and admins. People who probably DO want to be able to be contacted by other HN'ers, fail to put their contact info in their "about" box because they don't know they need to.

If someone wants to contact me, they can reply to one of my recent comments to ask for my email.

...Isn't registration still free? How is it not publicly visible if other hackers (HNers) can view it? I think I will add my email anyway... I am not anonymous. Just wondering about your logic.

The email field is invisible. If you add it to your profile it's world-visible. I still think the usefulness outweighs spam risk, though.

It's not just visible to "other HNers," it's visible to everybody. Bit of a tone-deaf request.

Nice try, spammers

pfft, it's funny, pokes fun at the "reddit is invading" meme, and answers his question by showing _why_ people don't put their email addresses in an easily scrapeable / semi-public forum. In 3 words! Screw you, downvoters!

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