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by jessriedel 2798 days ago
Isnt the assumption here that he didn't want to share this publicly? It seems like a betrayl of trust, regardless of the merits.
2 comments

It’s a slightly different motivation. There is something worse than a forum troll, and that’s a forum censor.

I could post all the stuff publicly, but then I’d get more downvotes, because a lot of forum users enforce the norms they like.

I see the number of points in my posts like this one jockey up and down repeatedly, meaning equal double-digit numbers of readers approve and don’t. Being able to follow that history would prove fascinating, but it’s not a feature on HN.

I’ve even attracted a following of a couple of readers who downvote anything I post.

So it’s with the norm—enforcing downvoter in mind when I want to reach out.

Share away. I can’t even give my technology ideas away.

I never told him that I would keep his correspondence private, nor did he ask me to do so.

Here is the entire email chain between myself and mchannon: https://go.eligrey.com/t/mchannon-email

That's why I said "assumption", i.e., from the context that he didn't post on HN but would respond to private messages.