A low-risk way to dip your toes in is to email a blogger to say that you enjoyed their post or that you found it helpful. The message doesn’t have to have useful information in it, just be sincere. Per OP, often there won’t be a reply but also often it’s much appreciated - particularly by non-mainstream writers.

I’ve been on the creator side with 1M+ followers and the amount of times someone has dropped a kind note like that can be counted on one hand. It’s such a breath of fresh air compared to the hate, criticizing and general unpleasantness that is so pervasive when dealing with online communities - even my own.

As a result, I make it a point to send notes to anyone if I’ve enjoyed their work, because I know how much its meant to me, that I hope to pass along those kind, appreciate feelings.

I only have my email in my app, no social media or whatever. And received a lot of kind emails from users, issues they found, feature requests.

It is really something and I'm very grateful for their emails.

I get dozens of cold emails and LI messages from sales/ recruiting a week. Only about one per year writes "I read your blog and liked your point about xyz." I always take that call. My LI (and HN) profile opens with my blog, so if they did 5 seconds of research they would find it.

I do this often and it is something that everyone not only appreciates but sometimes their favorite email of that day.

Even a simple email like "I really like the design of your website/blog" will make their day.

Oh I really enjoy it when I get random emails from people that have read my posts and have occasionally mailed maintainers of software projects that it is working perfectly for me. It's always a nice change of pace from bug reports.

Even lower risk is to email hn@ycombinator.com with duplicate posts or other issues on this site! It helps, and it gets you a bit over the fear of emailing. ;)

Yes!

I hope this feature of the internet is protected.