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Comment by rectang | Hacker News Reader

See for example:

https://melissamcewen.medium.com/a-guide-to-hacker-news-for-...

That author advocates that HN stay how it is — or rather, she advocates changing it from within. But I don't think it's possible — I believe that the "assume good faith" proposition leads to toleration of unlimited low-grade hostility that does not rise above the threshold of flagging. The result is that outgroups flee the platform. Have you not noticed the gender imbalance around here?

From what I can see it's pick your poison:

* "Assume good faith" — outgroups don't participate. Exclusion may not be the intent, but it is the de facto result.

* Siloed: outgroups can and will meaningfully participate, but debate is more constrained.

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Meh, low-grade harassment to you might be completely acceptable conversation to other people, and that is the crux of the issue. Voting is used to identify bad-faith responses. If certain people can't handle responses which are in good faith, then I am personally glad that they are not participating. Those are not the kind of people that make good discussions anyway.

Find me a comment that’s remotely critical of anything and I’ll find you an “outgroup” who believes it’s low-grade hostility.

I wish the article gave more examples than a single 2-line comment (that was already flagged and called out for being "stupid" by the moderator anyways)

Can't say I've noticed the gender of any user here?

You won't find genitalia on HN. You will find pervasive psychological profiles that correlate well with gender, if you just pay attention.

I was interested but not particularly moved by that example.

Yeah, I'm not surprised. I mean, the ridiculous gender imbalance here doesn't bother a lot of those who have stayed. It's a vicious cycle — the people who it bothers leave, and since those are disproportionately women, the imbalance gets worse.

FWIW I agree with you. That this and your other post are both light gray kinda proves your point. Neither post ‘contribute nothing to the discussion’

Well, the HN guidelines for downvoting consider disagreement a legitimate criteria. I take the downvotes as connoting mostly disagreement rather than a judgment that I was commenting in bad faith or posting something substance-free.

The disagreement may be unsurprising, but I'd rather be persuasive. I'm not chasing "heretic" cred.

I think it looks more like people interested in gender and identity based activism leave, and people interested in signal-to-noise ratio stay. I literally have no idea about gender of any person but a handful of "celebrities" on HN - and it never occurred to me to account for it in reading or writing comments (excluding, of course, ones directly discussing gender issues of a specific person, which are thankfully rare). But of course, I am aware of demographics of the tech community, and there's a place to discuss it. It's just it doesn't have to be the only - or the primary - thing to discuss on HN. For me. I guess for people that think otherwise there might be other venues they may prefer, and it's fine too. There's absolutely no problem in existence of the multiple forums with diverse set of focal topics. One doesn't even have to "leave" HN to be able to discuss gender issues in other places.

The point is that regardless of reason, women are by and large not well represented on HN. This is easily discovered by looking through the profiles of the top 100 posters and following the breadcrumbs. I recall that a few years ago, DoreenMichele was the only identifiable female.

> I think it looks more like people interested in gender and identity based activism leave, and people interested in signal-to-noise ratio stay.

That's not true, as there are plenty of people discussing male-focused gender issues and male identity based activism, in addition to those discussing women, transgender, and universal gender issues.

"Regardless of reason" makes a poor point.

> This is easily discovered by looking through the profiles of the top 100 posters and following the breadcrumbs.

Why would I want to do that? I mean, unless I am specifically interested either in gender activism (I am not), or in dating a top-100 HN poster (I am happily married) - why would I bother to research what kind of bits each of top-100 HN posters carry between their legs?

> That's not true, as there are plenty of people discussing male-focused gender issues

I would like to see some data supporting the assumption that male-focused gender issues and male-focused activism are discussed significantly more frequently on HN than female-focused gender issues and female-focused activism. This does not match my anecdotal impression - but of course I could be wrong. Could I see the source of your claims?

> Why would I want to do that?

I only mention it to support the assertion that the gender imbalance exists. You wouldn't do it ordinarily.

> I would like to see some data supporting the assumption that male-focused gender issues and male-focused activism are discussed significantly more frequently on HN than female-focused gender issues and female-focused activism.

I didn't make such an assertion, as I was only rebutting the idea that "people interested in gender and identity based activism leave" per se. There are plenty of such discussions — a 700-comment thread on limb lengthening surgery just went by within the last day. The thread is filled with testimonials as to the discrimination faced by short men and the harms caused, including stories of heinous, callous bigotry.

(To which I say: yes let's please work together to be better to each other. Let's start from the assumption that it is human nature to be prejudiced and we all need to work to overcome our biases, rather than dividing ourselves into "x-ist"/"not-x-ist".)

I actually suspect that there may in fact be more male-focused gender identity discussion on HN than female-focused, but I haven't done the research. The misperception about that arises because men may not classify their own identity discussions as identity discussions.

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