Ask HN: What would it take to have a DM feature on HN?

Would love to hear the estimate from one of the many people who think Dropbox/Twitter/Facebook are simple weekend projects.

They could probably knock this one out in less time than it took me to write this comment.

The site doesn't even support basic text formatting features like tables, lists, quotes, and code sections that don't scroll. I'm just pleased we got the comment expand/collapse, people were asking for that for years.

DM is a whole other kettle of fish, since it would change how the site is meant to be used, and may open the admins up to more law enforcement inquiries.

For those wondering, DM stands for direct messaging (I hope I wasn't the only one).

It might not be a good fit. I just see HN as a way to gather nerds, have them talk about news, and somewhat funnel them into YC recruitment.

It doesn't seem to be designed as a community, more like a bazaar.

The current workaround is to put your contact info in your profile, which has worked well for me.

With that said, I did create a small app to encourage HN users to message 1-on-1: https://findkismet.com

So the reason I am looking for a DM feature is not so much that it becomes a chat, but often you do see requests to be DMed for furthering a conversation offline - say for jobs or projects etc. And often this results in hunting down the "target"'s email from their profile and firing up an email client etc. Yes a very first world problem but still was hoping for a slightly easier way to do this (short of writing a browser plugin).

I do like @remyp's app idea but it still requires me a few "redirects" mentally.