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Comment by finite_jest | Hacker News Reader

From HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html):

> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.

Maybe I didn't word it well enough, but I intend to comment on a broad category of discussion that I don't think is necessarily inappropriate according to the guidelines, but tends to produce unproductive, hostile conversations. I understand that anti-diversity blogs often gain a lot of traction with a particular subset of HN readers, but it consistently winds up producing flame wars and can make HN a less friendly place.

It seems to me that HN is the last place you can discuss this topic - it's just preemptively deleted on Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

The author of this substack has a Twitter account too, where this same article is promoted and discussed:

https://twitter.com/TaraRHenley

This same article is also under active discussion on two subreddits:

https://old.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/comments/rv9kvx/tara...

https://old.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/rv9l8v/tara_henley_...

Tend to agree.

And, yes, there are people who get really hostile with these kinds of conversations (HN is a decent-sized community, so not surprising, and it's not always the same people in every discussion so I'd like to avoid any broad brush interpretation of this remark), but I think HN is one of the last places where it is possible, online, to have difficult discussions about challenging issues. That's an incredibly important, although possibly (originally) unintended, role.

On a personal note, I value hearing different perspectives, and often come away from HN discussions feeling like I've learned something, so I am against squelching it.

Well, technically there's another place, but we don't go there anymore. Like Ravenholm, and for similar reasons.

There used to be more discussion about the topic from the pro-diversity, anti-racist perspective until it was temporarily banned under the euphemism of "politics."

Based on the number of flagged posts I've seen on here... I think it's not preemptively deleted, but it is very self-censoring.

I think I saw a few of the posts that got flagged. I'm guessing they were flagged not because of their viewpoint or argument, but because of their tone/hostility.

FWIW, I do think that HN has a problem with downvoting minority viewpoints. I'm just not sure that's what happened here.

If this were some strictly academic or political debate, i'd completely agree with you. But these ideas and policies are having a pretty major impact on employment and hiring in the tech industry, which obviously directly impacts everyone here, and the culture of the industry. If HN isn't a forum where those sorts of issues should be discussed, where is?

> anti-diversity blogs

You keep using this phrase and I think it's disingenuous at best. Sure, there are probably people here who genuinely don't want to be around people who don't look like themselves. But I'd be willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of people who you would describe as "anti-diversity" are really just sick of stuff like this, from the article.

> To work at the CBC now is to accept the idea that race is the most significant thing about a person, and that some races are more relevant to the public conversation than others. It is, in my newsroom, to fill out racial profile forms for every guest you book; to actively book more people of some races and less of others.

Even if you dismiss that as hyperbole (which it is), a lot of people are wondering why so many of our politicians/institutions focus so much on dividing up the populace by race.

> a less friendly place

I draw a line connecting the prevalence and vigor of anti-diversity flame wars on HN and the lack of gender diversity on HN. The ecosystem tolerates a high baseline of hostility so long as you couch that hostility in ways which meet the letter of the guidelines.

I've often wished for an alternative to HN because of it. This place doesn't really match my punk-rock hacker ethos where the underdog and the excluded are celebrated.

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