Hacker News Reader

Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

That's not a fair description of HN's audience. The community is divided on divisive issues, just like any sufficiently large population sample would be. It only seems to be stacked against your view because provocative comments stand out more. We can point to countless generalizations about HN's audience that characterize it just the opposite way, and for the same reason.

Edit: as one illustrative example, the top two comments on this submission are currently both by women substantively critiquing the article, one of whom happens to be using a breast pump these days (and has amazingly detailed things to say about it, very much in the spirit of this site). Surprising? Not really. HN is just more diverse than many people say it is.

(I imagine users flagged your comment because it failed to be civil and substantive as the site guidelines ask.)

View on HN

HN's audience has demonstrated itself to be insensitive to women's issues in the past, and is reasonably techbro-heavy. That's why I said I expected the downvotes. It may be a large population, but it's not a particularly diverse one.

And it wasn't just this comment that was flagged. It was my other one (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15305765), which lays out the substantive reasons why I disagreed with the parent comment. Though that one was subsequently unflagged (and then upvoted).

> HN's audience has demonstrated itself

I can't agree with that. These perceptions are notoriously in the eye of the beholder.

Let me put it this way: HN "demonstrates" a lot of things—that's how user-generated content works. People pick the ones that stand out to them and call that "HN", but they could just as easily have picked the opposite ones, and indeed many others do.

> it's not a particularly diverse one

That's particularly off; it's hugely diverse (or at least divided), which is why the generalizations people make about it are contradictorily all over the place. At some point I need to put together a big list to illustrate this. I sometimes feel like I'm the only person who sees it, since it's my job to look at this stuff all day.

> And it wasn't just this comment that was flagged. It was my other one

It's easy to understand why it was flagged: conducting disagreement via "Bullshit", "Cry me a river", etc. breaks the site guidelines. Changing the subject slightly, I sometimes wonder whether this bullying, pugnacious approach to online commenting doesn't contribute to the very exclusionary dynamic that people on your side of the argument deplore. I deplore it too, and can't help but notice how comments on both sides can be equally bro-ey, douchey, and wincey. It makes HN less welcoming all around. Many people seem to think they get a pass for being right (one doesn't, of course), and then use that to vent what feel more like personal fumes.

In case it helps, I don't disagree with your underlying views (though mostly I don't read comments closely for that—it's too hard, and there are too many). Perhaps you noticed that I replied no less critically to the person you were objecting to, who broke the site guidelines as well.

Upon reflection, I’m actually a little concerned that you, the moderator, are calling my simple comment uncivil (and letting it remain flagged). This is exactly what I meant by abusing HN’s tools to silence dissenting opinions. I’m not calling the parent names, or swearing, or doing anything else that’s obviously uncivil. I’m just disagreeing with the parent. The only problem with my comment is that it’s very simple and doesn’t provide the reasoning to back up my claim that the parent doesn’t understand the product/market and is making assumptions (which isn’t an issue that warrants suppressing the comment). But mere disagreement is not uncivil behavior.

The comment was uncivil because it was unduly personal. Also it was harsh and unsubstantive, and guilty of its own charge (making assumptions) to boot. All that makes for a bad combo. I realize you don't see it that way, but that's because we all misjudge how our comments land with others online.

Moderating this sort of thing is routine to the point of tedium on Hacker News and doesn't have to do with your specific views, let alone 'silencing dissent' (a rather bombastic phrase which I hear a lot, from every ideological quarter). It just has to do with people's tendency to attack each other on the internet, which the spirit of HN is to try to work around, in the hope of good and interesting conversation. That's all.

Actually these attacks mirror each other across all ideological divides. We moderate them routinely as best we can, and then people routinely accuse us of siding with their enemies [1], but (a) these claims are contradictory and so cancel each other out, and (b) I'm pretty sure the majority of readers trust that we're not biased that way—or at least not ridiculously so, because our job would be impossible if we were.

1. An example from a few minutes ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15310419.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com