Ask YC: Verifying Gender | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC: Verifying Gender

5 pointsstcredzero14 comments

I am mulling over the idea of a social news site for women. These already exist, but they seem to rely on the notion of being so "girly" that supposedly only women would want to read them. I find this limiting. (I am male, however, so perhaps this is just my distorted point of view.) Is there a good way to verify the gender of users that won't turn them off? Perhaps using Facebook?

I also seem to remember mentions of moderated women-only websites in Japan.

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I'm not sure why you would want to do this. What's better about a site that verifies that all members are women? Protection from invading anti-feminists? Safe space, like an online women's center?

A good strategy might be to make the site invite-only, and distribute invite codes to early members stressing that it is supposed to only be for women. That might actually generate a sort of buzz, if you forbid it to men.

Making the site invite-only is a good strategy. But it will not do enough to prevent men from getting registered. There would have to be another mechanism.

The purpose would be to have a social news site that's oriented towards women, but which does not accomplish this by actively encouraging "girly" content. I want the notion of "what's interesting to women" to be emergent, not socially engineered by the site's designers. Also, I suspect that this will make the site safer as well.

The mechanism does not have to be foolproof. The ability to flag abusive users and other moderation mechanisms will still be needed to weed out the "leaks" and female users who also happen to be abusive.

Simple, require registration.

Ask gender.

If they answer Male, tell them to fuck off.

I think there might be a security hole in that one...

This won't work. There is a sizable population on the net that likes to pose as female. If all you have to do to forge a female identity online is to choose female, then lots of guys will do it.

I'm thinking that having an "unverified" status is the way to do it. Users who are not yet verified can browse and do certain things, but cannot comment or moderate. Alternatively, they will be able to comment, but at a lower Karma score, or some such.

But gender is ALWAYS "just ask and trust them", isn't it? Are you going to check their crotch? Or their hormone levels? Or their chromosomes? It's a bit silly, isn't it?

There is a sizable population on the net that likes to pose as female.

Not just on the net. I'd argue that the only reason it's so much more sizable on the internet is that gender-bending is so much cheaper there.

In real life, it isn't just "ask and trust them." You have to be invested in an identity. I figure that maintaining a female Facebook identity is a good enough analogue. This won't be absolute, but as you point out, neither is determining gender in real life.

If gender-bending is not so cheap, then by your logic, you should get different dynamics. I am curious what a social news site for intelligent women would produce. Not a Digg for women, but a Hacker News for women!

Make registration require an invite from another member. For the initial users, only invite people you know to be women, and that you trust to follow your rule of only inviting other women themselves.

It may slow your growth at first but could add to the sense of exclusivity that you appear to want. A strong community devotion to the idea of women-only membership might be a side-effect of the self-selecting invite/agree process.

Though beware: there be dragons in online conceptions of gender, and it's sure to always be a topic of controversy (PR hooks?), especially as a man creating a women's-only site.

Well, right now this is primarily an intellectual exercise for me. If I were to actually do this, I'd want to get 1 or 2 female co-founders.

As far as online concepts of gender, the purpose of the site would be "a place where everyone presents their real-life female gender online." This is commensurate with Facebook, which can be seen as an antidote to the chaotic anonymity of the internet. There's a lot of reasons why the internet sucks for women. I suspect that a part of that has to do with the difficulty of escaping the hordes of (emotionally) adolescent males here.

http://xkcd.com/322/

Think of it as Curves for user-generated and moderated content.

there be dragons in online conceptions of gender

And how! There are plenty of biomales who nonetheless consider themselves female, and would probably be well-served by a site like this. What's the value in keeping them out?

Gender is not always so strictly binary.

I don't think you really need to worry overmuch about keeping out men. If you just say it's a "site for women" and make sure to have lots of offerings on topics that you know will attract a largely female audience, you'll probably find that you don't have a problem. http://shine.yahoo.com has an almost entirely female audience, and they certainly don't do anything to keep out anyone. Most men won't want to visit a site that's marketed towards women.

And anyway, what's really the harm if men visit your site?

There are plenty of biomales who nonetheless consider themselves female, and would probably be well-served by a site like this. What's the value in keeping them out?

If they present themselves in public as bonafide females then I wouldn't. This would be for people who are female gendered in real life. There are already plenty of places where you can be a female just online.

There may not be harm in men visiting the site. But there is potential benefit in a female-only site. This would only happen if we could keep most men out.

If they present themselves in public as bonafide females then I wouldn't.

And if they present themselves in public sometimes as bonafide females and sometimes as bonafide males? What then?

This would be for people who are female gendered in real life.

Again, how do you even even define that, precisely? Gender is not so binary as we make it.

There are already plenty of places where you can be a female just online.

And your site would, inevitably, be another one of those. So what?

But there is potential benefit in a female-only site. This would only happen if we could keep most men out.

Marketing! You're Doing It Wrong!!

Instead of worrying about keeping people out, you should be worrying about who you're bringing in, and how to target that market. If you get a few extra page-views, um, is that really a problem?

Defining gender absolutely precisely is not important. Keeping males out absolutely is not important either. People deal with the gender issue in real life just fine without such absolutes. The system only has to work well enough, like real life. And in real life, it manages to work well enough because of costs. It will "cost" a lot more to pose as a female on such a site. Therefore there will be fewer posers.

More page-views is fine. Commenting would be female-only. That is the value proposition. Female-majority forums aren't all that common.

although its not really "women-only", sugar inc (http://www.sugarinc.com/) is female-focused, somewhat-social news and such.

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