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Tell HN: Consider listing your contact details
TL;DR: Consider listing your contact details in your HN profile!
There are lots of interesting conversations happening here on HN. But sometimes people might want to continue the discussions even after threads fall of the front page.
Have you considered listing your contact details on HN so that people can get in touch with you more easily?
If you want to do that, please note that it’s not enough to fill in the email field on your profile. Only the HN admins can see that field.
If you want others to see your e-mail address etc, you need to explicitly put it in the about text area.
Some members want to keep a low profile and I certainly respect that. But please consider what you might be missing. There’s also no requirement to use your main e-mail address. One could also use an alternative e-mail in order to stay pseudonymous.
There are just so many interesting people here so I thought that one might not want to miss out on all interesting connections that could occur. For example, interesting job offers are not uncommon here.
Just my 2¢ though, do what thou wilt. Peace!
- nynx 5y agoThe profile page should really mention that the email address isn’t publicly visible. I’ve been confused about that in the past, and I’ve seen others as well.
- nuclearnice1 5y agoBefore you enter your email there is this. > Please put a valid address in the email field, or we won't be able to send you a new password if you forget yours. Your address is only visible to you and us. Crawlers and other users can't see it.
- sokoloff 5y agoMany people would sign up and later decide they feel comfortable putting their email in an accessible location and silently fail to accomplish that when they go to profile page (long after signup) and see “oh, it’s already there” (only it isn’t viewable to others).
- nuclearnice1 5y agoAgree
- f0xytr0xy 5y agoThis seems ill-advised as it mostly serves to increase the attack surface for data miners and spammers.
- rantwasp 5y agohmm. not sure it’s ill-advised. I have a “burner” email in the about box and all the conversation I’ve had up until now were productive. YMMV
- cpach 5y agoIt’s entirely optional of course! However, I’m fairly sure that no spammer has scraped my address from here. And obfuscation is possible for those inclined. For example, no spammer will (in practice) parse this contact information: echo 'Y0B0dW5uZWw1My5uZXQ=' | base64 --decode But for a human HN reader it’s fairly easy to decode.
- 0des 5y agoAlso works with tr echo "fgbr@bczx.9c" | tr 'rbgfcxz9' 'plehodus'
- kazinator 5y agoThis version doesn't require the knowledge of any system or programming language: "To obtain my e-mail address reverse the following text from left to right, letter by letter: moc.elpmaxe@raboof". Note that grandparent cpach, if you check their profile, is actually relying on the good old (dot) (at) obfuscation system, and not the base64 command they proposed in the comment.
- MauranKilom 5y agoI would think twice about executing bash code from people's profiles. Sure, the prior probability of trolls is pretty low on HN, and I know that your specific snippet is safe, but it's easy to get fooled, even if you think you know what you are doing. See https://superuser.com/questions/996795/how-and-why-is-this-string-of-text-a-fork-bomb https://superuser.com/questions/996795/how-and-why-is-this-s....
- city41 5y agoOver the years a fair number of people have contacted me through HN. Only one time did I feel like the person was trying to sell me something, all the other interactions were positive. So I'd recommend doing this.
- ivalm 5y agoI’m opposite. Of the ~5 times I got cold emailed based on my HN profile it was someone asking me if I’d be interested in a product of their startup.
- 0des 5y agoWere the products somewhat relevant to your interests?
- paxys 5y agoWhy is that bad? This is a startup forum at the end of the day.
- vimy 5y agoIt doesn’t feel like a startup forum anymore. When is the last time you’ve seen a post about improving a landing page? It’s more of a general tech forum now.
- Kye 5y agoIt was always an "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" forum (at least since I was first aware of it), but it grew out of a startup incubator, so the early focus was inevitable.
- mattmanser 5y agoNo, I would also say that it definitely used to be far more focused on starting a tech startup, with tech as a sideline, now it's the opposite. I feel the shift started happening around the time product hunt got popular, so a couple of years before you joined.
- cm2187 5y agoIn this brave new world of the new McCarthyism, not sure an honest conversation is compatible with PII.
- cpach 5y agoI don’t follow. What do you mean…?
- edoceo 5y agoNaming names of dissenter or others who wish to up-end the status quo. So, you don't what identifiable information out there. Good thing my account is fully anomym-ized
- chana_masala 5y agoI usually fuzz true details (am I 40? am I 47? Do I live in Chennai? Mumbai? Thailand?) about myself when sharing an anecdote here. Or eventually create a new account after I feel like I've shared too much on one. Pretty paranoid I guess.
- axpy906 5y agoThey mean that a comment made now could come back to cancel them later.
- icedchai 5y agoYou can't be sure something you say today won't be used against you tomorrow. Cancel culture is growing. Best to be pseudo-anonymous.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lasershark789 5y agoPeople who disagree with your politics may try to dox you and get you fired.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- giantg2 5y agoI've thought about setting up an email alias, but then I remember that nothing I say is important or interesting enough.
- Jailbird 5y agoI feel the same way. Despite this comment, I'm far more reticent to share an opinion, and I don't find that I have so many great unknown facts to enlighten others. I do like getting one or two "Internet points" on HN over the years, though :)
- j1elo 5y agoThat's just a feeling you have. I know, because I had it too. I'd be surprised if it's not a typical self-criticism phenomenom that is common to most people, just like the famous impostor syndrome. But just like 95% of people here seem to have a more interesting and knowledgeable opinion that mine, there is always people for whom you are part of that 5%. Just don't be shy of participating. You'll learn more and faster from others. And some interesting conversations will happen, in public or private, for sure.
- ungamed 5y agoI'd like that to be true, but if your world experience is different than the general US population things wont work out well for you.
- keithnz 5y agowell, I've had my email address on mine for a while, and all it does is confirm I have nothing important or interesting enough for anyone to follow up on! But then, I've never really wanted to contact anyone else either, if I've had questions, I've asked them on here.
- ymosy 5y agoI feel the same thing. I’m so accustomed to lurking that I sometimes even forget to upvote some posts I’ve really enjoyed. But then I realize it’s no big deal because usually at that point in time most people have already performed the filtering. Sometimes I do vote though but it’s not consistent and I’m not sure why it feels like there’s a barrier for making it into a habit.
- h0p3 5y agoI'd like to recommend having a personal site (not simply a professional portfolio) as well. I read through people's accounts on forums often, and it's nice to have an external place to go where they have a stronger stake of ownership and more autonomy to model themselves. Also, HMU, yo.
- Sebb767 5y agoI always felt like the rather disconnected nature of HN (i.e. no mail notifications, no bell to inform you about replies, ...) is a big part of what makes HN a better social media platform than most others. Still, I agree that sometimes it would be nice to be able contact someone directly.
- rudian 5y agoHonestly I have no idea how HN is not overrun with spam and crap comments. It’s too easy to register anonymously similarly to Reddit. I suppose the “boring content” and lack of images keeps some people away.
- ImaCake 5y agoReally strict moderation is the key. It does work on the parts of reddit that use it. r/AskHistorians is a stellar resource, although the price is that it is not a forum.
- kowlo 5y agoI wonder how much "first contact" is missed because of emails going straight to spam...
- Kye 5y agoI've gotten Twitter follows and a few Patreon/Ko-fi supporters through it, but nobody's ever emailed me through it.
- andrethegiant 5y agoHow do you know your follows are from your HN profile?
- Kye 5y agoI recognize the name, or it's someone in tech. It's not always a 100% certain thing.
- floatingatoll 5y agoI stripped my website down to nothing after someone did this, because I left one too many crumbtrails and they were able to pin down an email address. It's not their fault I slipped up on that, so I didn't take any harm from it, but it was definitely a reminder that I'm not interested in my connection to HN spreading beyond HN. However, I still absolutely endorse the suggestion made here, if unasked contact is of interest to you, especially if you're looking for a job.
- MattGaiser 5y agoI use my real name and list my employer, so I should hope that people can figure out my contact info. But yes, I have made some interesting contacts on here.
- xwdv 5y agoDid an identity thief write this post...
- cpach 5y agoNope :)
- Bayart 5y agoWhile I feel atrociously impolite pinging people who've never asked me anything out of the blue, I do enjoy sending a small thank-you email to people who've, often inadvertently, brought me down a rabbit hole I wasn't aware of before.
- Tade0 5y agoI have link to my, ahem, "technical blog" and my real name is in the copyright notice. I also happen to most likely be the single person with such a name on LinkedIn, so it's fairly easy to reach me. I'm not putting any more effort into this because I don't think I'm that interesting.
- searchableguy 5y agoI read your latest post about linters and not liking ceremony involved in setting up eslint. Have you tried deno lint by any chance? https://github.com/denoland/deno_lint https://github.com/denoland/deno_lint You can use it via the deno binary as well. I don't use LinkedIn so I couldn't contact you there. Maybe adding an email on your site would be nice alternative.
- maximp 5y agoI've had some really great connections through HN. I hope it stays authentic and spam-free.
- Waterluvian 5y agoMine are discoverable with a few jumps. I find it the appropriate amount of indirection to make sure people actually feel motivated enough to. It’s worked well. Gotten a handful of really high quality interactions.
- Agentlien 5y agoThis is the same for me, though so far I have been contacted once in 6 years. And that was someone asking my email in a thread. So, I guess I'm not interesting enough to be worth the effort?
- lucb1e 5y agoI have about 10x as much "karma" (i.e. I waste a lot more time here; I don't think these cumulative points say much about the positive or negative impact of my presence) and get not that many emails either. More than you though, since I'm more visible I guess. Perhaps one per year? Either we are both uninteresting or it's just normal to keep the main conversation here instead of moving to email.
- lucb1e 5y agoGo to your website, email shown on about page. That's not that indirect at all to me, but also I like it that way (in general it occasionally happens that I want to PM someone; most often I find an empty bio unfortunately).
- Waterluvian 5y agoYep. I’m not talking making it a maze. Just a couple jumps so you clearly are interested in talking. Not just spamming or resume dumping or something.
- renewiltord 5y agoIve definitely beer dropped a couple of hundred dollars of ETH or XLM to people who gave me good info. If you leave a crypto address, I might do that too.
- bckr 5y ago> do what thou wilt love is the law, & etc.
- reilly3000 5y agoI recently fell into the rabbit hole of Aleister Crowley... it just keeps going and going. I wonder what he and the world might be like had he been born in the bay area in the 70's.
- hash872 5y agoAs someone who was into Crowley when I was 13-14 (and then read up on him again as an adult)- he was a genuinely interesting person, kind of a Renaissance man for his time, while of course also being an utter loon. For instance he was a genuine mountaineer, not just a dilettante, and I believe held a record on K2 for a time. He was also pretty ahead of his time in absorbing wisdom from Indian & Chinese cultures, something that was probably less appreciated in a more Western-centric era. He was also kinda ahead of his time with hard drugs.... Interestingly, he met L Ron Hubbard towards the end of his life, and apparently judged the man as a con artist, FWIW
- bdcravens 5y agoI've had a few contact me outside of HN, but I've made it simple - I use the same username on Twitter, Gmail, etc as I use here (and stated as much in my profile)
- SavantIdiot 5y ago1. I say so much exploratory shit on here, just to see where that line of thought goes. No effing way I'd want people to really know how stupid or childish I can be whilst trying different crazy thoughts or behaviors. I prefer freedom to explore ideas without consequences thank you! If that is anti-HN, then by all means, delete me and block my IP. I'll just go back to lurking. 2. I don't want my personal id'ing info ever floating around associated with lengthy diary. Seems like a gargantuan attack surface. Maybe I'm just paranoid. EDIT: FYI: This is the ONLY social media website I post on. Period. Nothing else. No reddit. No linkedin. No FB. No tweeting. Nada. EDIT#2: DanG's reply messages directly to me have really changed my dynamic, I've become slightly less hot-headed and come to see why HN is a great place. No other social media site "taught me" this, even from a guy who spent plenty of time on CompuServe and usenet.
- sillysaurusx 5y agoIt's not anti-HN. But consider using a separate gmail address. I had one for awhile and lots of people reached out. Nowadays no one seems to reach out because I've become super boring. :) But it can be fun when it happens. EDIT: Oh. I didn't have my email in my profile. Welp, that'd do it too.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- crossroadsguy 5y agoNo. That’s a horrible idea. Maybe dang should add an HN messaging feature that should be disabled by default. But, I think that’s another horrible idea.
- 0xbadcafebee 5y agoYou can create a free email account that you use just for HN and forward it to your normal mail. If you get a mail from a HN user, just log into your HN email and reply (or don't)
- 5y ago
- mindcrime 5y agoI've had my info in my profile for quite some time. I've gotten almost no spam as a result, and have had a handful of pleasant discussions with people from here. Once in a blue moon I get an email that says something like "I saw your comment on FOO and just wanted to say how much I appreciated your take" or something like that. Or one that says "You gave me some advice in the thread on BAR and it was really useful, thanks", etc. Those are the ones I really appreciate. Haven't gotten many (if any) that lead to much of anything from a career/business standpoint, but you never know what could happen some day.
- sevensor 5y agoI'm quite happy not to be contacted about what I say on this forum. I have neither the time nor the inclination to engage more deeply than I do by commenting here. I've been on HN for most of a decade now, and in that time I've had people figure out who I was a couple of times. They were quite polite about it, not creepy, but I prefer being able to disengage from this forum completely and not have it intrude on the rest of my life. This is low-effort recreation for me. I have a job I love and friends to match; I'm not out to find either on the internet.
- jqcoffey 5y agoMy handle pretty much unmasks me. I was pinged at work as the result of a post or two (thankfully in a good way). I kinda like that if you want to reach me you at least have to Google my handle. Just about the right amount of indirection I think.
- ashton314 5y agoI’ve enjoyed the interactions I’ve had with people from HN. My suggestion? Use a Matrix address
- austincheney 5y agoNope. A different venue maybe, but I can only imagine the horror when a snowflake blizzard of sensitive people come together to form a downvote brigade with your contact details. HN is well separated from the real world and I will keep it that way and happily accept my downvotes.
- cratermoon 5y agoI don't see enough upsides in having an email in my HN profile to counter the potential problems. I guess if I saw any incentives on HN for people to email me useful things, I'd at least put up a pseudonymous address. Turning it into a way to meet and start direct conversations with each other seems like more of a LinkedIn thing.
- axaxs 5y agoYeah, no. Not until this twitter mob bs stops. One off color or worse, misinterpreted, comment can wreck your life.
- mmaunder 5y agoI do list my personal info. I used to get contacted by interesting folks. Back then HN was a very different community - circa 2010 and earlier. These days it’s a lot more popular and more like Reddit with populist up or downvotes. So honestly I’d say it’s not worth it. Sorry. And… see you at the bottom of this comment thread (too).
- newbamboo 5y agoI don’t think it’s changed that much. The internet and social context have, but the content posted and the discussions are still really good here despite complaints to the contrary.
- arrty88 5y agoOr HN could build private messaging
- ocdtrekkie 5y agoI think one of the key successes of HN is that it doesn't try to be more than it is, and does what it does well.
- wyclif 5y agoIf you want to do that, please note that it’s not enough to fill in the email field on your profile. Only the HN admins can see that field I didn't know that; thanks for pointing it out. I just added my email to "About."
- smsm42 5y agoIn the current climate of marauding twitter mobs in constant search of food for their outrage cycle, I think I'd better not give them more information than necessary.
- tablespoon 5y ago> In the current climate of marauding twitter mobs in constant search of food for their outrage cycle, I think I'd better not give them more information than necessary. One of the best ways to do that is to avoid persistent online identity. It's probably the best way to emulate ephemerality on the internet nowadays. IMHO, there's very little reason to link any online identities together or to use any one for too long.
- taurath 5y agoAnd on HN you can’t change your name, so hope you’ve made that decision to obfuscate when you’ve signed up.
- grumblenum 5y agoHaving observed the quality of the commentary here, particularly my own, I would not want to be friends with someone who posts here. Game-ified bloviating is no virtue.
- ytNumbers 5y agoYour comment sounds very close to that old Groucho Marx quote: "I would never join any club that would have me as a member."
- samstave 5y agoIt would be great if HN had a "request contact infor button" -- and one would get a notification alert that another HN account holder had requested to see ones contact.
- downWidOutaFite 5y agoI used to and it was nice, even got some business referrals, but then I had someone get mad at me on here and try to come after my business. The lesson of the 40 years of the web is that we can't have nice things because the 1% that are assholes ruin it for everybody.
- geuis 5y agoMeh. I’ve had my contact info here for years. The only time anyone has contacted me is the one time Paul G asked me to stop running a scraping bot experiment I was running for a bit many years ago.
- paulcarroty 5y agoDespite the spam threat, you can get valuable contacts. So I'll do it someday. P.S. My github profile is the same, so I got 10-20 strange followers - definitely HN-users :)
- benboughton1 5y agoGood idea. I'm in.
- dang 5y ago> If you want to do that, please note that it’s not enough to fill in the email field on your profile. Only the HN admins can see that field. If you want others to see your e-mail address etc, you need to explicitly put it in the about text area. It's been on my list to add a note about this to the profile pages. I've done that now. Thanks cpach!
- cpach 5y ago\o/
- nvarsj 5y agoIt’s a good idea I think, yet I’ve never been emailed in the 11 years I’ve been here. Maybe the things I say aren’t interesting enough :). Then again, I never emailed anyone either. I did have one scary encounter a few years ago on HN where someone tried to aggressively dox me, that led me to remove my email completely, but now I just obfuscate it a bit. I guess my main concern these days is that I said a lot of things on HN that I sort of regret now. Way too cynical and negative at times. I’m not sure I’d want a future employer going through my comment history! So I try not to make my personal link too obvious, and I suggest the same unless you are always guarded in what you say here.
- axegon_ 5y agoI agree, personally I've left my email address there, though the only email I've ever received was a rant how I bash javascript and I'm wrong and it's in fact the future of CS(along with some things about my ass and whatnot lol)...
- taurath 5y agoI’ll do that when I can remove comments being attributed to this account. There’s a huge history of comments that benefit exactly nobody but potential adversaries. Huge histories are stupid.
- nindalf 5y ago> please note that it’s not enough to fill in the email field on your profile. Only the HN admins can see that field. Whoa TIL. Was this a recent change?
- sofixa 5y agoNope, but HN recently added a notice right next to it to let you know it's the case.
- mam3 5y agoBut how can i troll then
- lukeholder 5y agoSo someone can scrape the site and build a huge DB of developers contact details to recruit/spam?
- beauHD 5y agoGetting cold emails from random HN'ers is so rare that I don't list an email because of that. (I experimented with emails in my bio on other accounts and can tell you for certain: people rarely reach out, if at all). I chat privately with a close cadre of friends that I have organically grown over years and I'm happy with my lot. Making friends with random HN'ers is not one of my goals on here. Besides, we can solve problems on HN itself and keep things out of email.
- IG_Semmelweiss 5y agoQuestion. Do you consider an anon protonmail account (with notification of inbox msgs going to actual email) sufficient for anonymous "deaddrop" communication ? Not snowden-level certified, sure...but is it good enough for most use cases not involving state actors / opsec activity?
- publicola1990 5y agoI don't know how useful this is in HN, but if github had something to sent a direct message to someone it would be very helpful.
- thunkshift1 5y agoSorry; this isn’t a social network (thankfully)
- mooreds 5y agoJust a heads up that if you do list your contact details, be prepared for some spamming. I have a sep address for this and have gotten a fair amount of spam to it, I assume from the email being harvested. To be fair, I've also had some interesting jobs sent my way and a few interesting discussions too.
- runawaybottle 5y agoTo be frank, all public social sites have resulted in less honest discourse. LinkedIn is a cesspool. The public blogs posted here by identifiable people are often fluffy and part of their self-branding strategy. The public people on Twitter virtue signal relentlessly. Anonymity is it’s own type of filter where you can say bullshit and also have your bullshit called out. It’s something we have to protect. This is very important for adults who understand enough about life to self censor out of politeness. It’s not an issue for the kids on Reddit because they are kids who like to talk shit anyway all day. But for working professional? Yeah, sorry, the adult thing to do is not bring our identity into it.