I presume that email address is for when you want to ask something of Hacker New, not to ask something about Hacker News.
For example they probably didn't want posts like "Hey Hacker News, why don't you call for the revival of emacs and the elimination of all vi users?" and would rather you email them so they can ignore it, but they also don't want email messages asking "How do I italicize text in a Hacker News comments, seriously I can't remember and I would have done so earlier in this comment if I could?" and would rather you ask the community who could answer it without bothering anyone working at Y Combinator.
Are you saying this based on experience or are you projecting? In my experience (tho not asking how to italicize text using * characters) Dang and tomhow are happy to answer all sorts of questions. Sometimes they do get bogged down by the reality of running a site of this site manually, as it were, but I can't remember a question that didn't eventually get answered. I'll even tell them I vouched for this bunch of dead comments, was that the right thing to do? And one of them will write back saying mostly, but just fyi comment xyz was more flamebaity than idea, but thank you for asking and working on calibrating your vouch-o-meter.
What's the problem? Someone submitted it for people to read but it didn't catch on, now it's resubmitted and people can read it after all. Everyone happy. Don't be so attached to imaginary internet points.
