[antgoldbloom]

You're right: we will miss people with this way of tracking referral source. I'm actually less concerned about this issue than when I first posted on HN. We now only post on HN, Stack Exchange and Github and we've found that the quality of the candidate pool is much higher than when we posted more broadly. I view HN, Stack Exchange and Github as equally credibly sources, so distiguishing HN from other sources is less important for us now than it was a few months ago.

Re harsh feedback, I understand the perspective, but think it's actually not such a big issue for us for two reasons: 1. as a culture, we strive to give each other direct feedback, so your comments are in keeping with a culture that we aspire to 2. on a more light-hearted note, FAR more harsh things have been said to us on the Kaggle forums. Helps us develop a tough skin :).

[eganist]

This interaction seems to have gone well on both sides, leaving me feeling particularly warm. As a member of the peanut gallery with no stake in the outcome of this interaction, I'm nonetheless glad this was sorted out!