Request HN: Can We have a Private Messaging Feature in HN?

I think it would be very handy. Not everybody realizes that the email you put in your profile isn't publicly visible; so they don't bother putting additional contact info in their "about" section.

Yes, it's true that "if you want to talk to somebody badly enough, you can probably hunt down their email address" but why add friction to the process? Ok, I get the folks who uses it as a filter "if you're too lazy, or not smart enough, and can't find my email, I don't want to talk to you." Fine, but I doubt most people feel that way. And that just argues for making the feature optional (that is, let users set a "receive PMs (Yes/No)" flag in their profile.

Iuguy makes an interesting point though:

Besides, you can always reply to someone's comment and ask for a way to get in touch with them.

The problem with that, as I see it, is that such a message is usually going to be (relative to the rest of the conversation) off-topic noise that nobody else cares about.

Thanks.

@Others, If I really want to contact someone on HN, I can definitely find their email ID. But email takes it out of the HN context and makes it much more formal.

And we could always have a PM disabling option.