[Bender]

Has there has been discussion previously on whether DMing other HN users is a feature that the community wants?

Many here do not like the idea of a DM or even being emailed so I would not get my hopes up.

Based on my memory of past discussions I think the best you can do is hope the person you are trying to reach has put an email alias in their public profile or perhaps ask them in one of their recent comments something like "Off Topic: Looking to contact you regarding [n] thread, my email is in my profile" or something to that affect and use an email alias you know is related to HN so that when you start getting botted/spammed to oblivion you can either create rules or discards or just delete the alias.