Comment by hawkharris | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hawkharris | Hacker News Reader

Have you ever noticed that HN posts concerning gender discrimination tend to attract hundreds of comments?

That's not intrinsically bad. What's questionable is the quality of the comments. It seems that almost all the remarks on this page are drawn from opinion or personal anecdotes. Don't get me wrong... personal stories can be interesting and insightful; it's just that, in most discussion threads, HN tends to balance opinion with links to more objective qualitative and quantitative sources. That's what differentiates HN from sites like Facebook and Reddit.

So, there should be a barrier to participating in discussions about gender on HN. If you have personal or professional experience that qualifies you to discuss the topic, please share it. If you took the time to research the issue and present a substantial, new perspective, please share it. But if you want to chime in with a vague, unsubstantiated opinion that dozens of others have already shared, please consider using another forum. That's what makes these discussions less productive.

As long as we're going meta here, I am thinking it would be more accurate statement would be that policy discussion posts tend to attract hundreds of comments. Policy discussions are the bike shedding topics of forums like this one. Everyone can participate because they require only an opinion and the barrier to having direct experience is low.

I don't believe it is a bad thing, rather it is the fact that a lot of people reading HN really want to participate in the discussions, but feel they don't have any direct experience so no clear way to participate. Comments like "I agree" do get down voted heavily, and even clever humor. So what does that leave? It leaves topics like gender discrimination or workplace drama.

I've seen similar participation in Ask HN type topics as they again often solicit opinions on a common issue.

Exactly. Discussions on these topics inherently require subjective value judgments on top of "more objective qualitative and quantitative sources", and I can't imagine trying to limit the comments to only the latter.

I appreciate your point. It's nice to have subjects that everyone can discuss. The key is probably to find a healthy balance between personal opinions and evidence-based writing.

Why the need to explicitly police the discussion? Doesn't HN's system of up-and-down votes already accomplish that?

Downvotes are pointless if peopoe don't agree on what they should be downvoting. For example, contrast r/askscience with r/funny

Allowing a voting system does not guarantee any form of quality control, especially when the content of the article is very controversial, if not intended to insight differing opinions.

I still don't see downvotes. I don't really post or comment very often, but I've been reading this site almost daily for years.

Maybe they could work that in to an algorithm that gives you the downvote option..

My point is that there are many, many people who are just readers (of posts and comments) who don't feel the need to comment on everything but are perfectly capable of helping police the content. Right now, I can only upvote if I like something. There is no other option for "this is not good/helpful"

> Maybe they could work that in to an algorithm that gives you the downvote option..

There is, actually. You need 500 karma, and you don't have that yet.

I think you misunderstood me. I meant the age of your account + your recent activity (as in, visits to the page) would account for something in the formula.

No, HN's system of up-and-down votes do not accomplish that at all. About the best you can say for them is that they send obviously, overtly malicious comments to the bottoms of threads; they do little to combat insidiously malicious comments.

Everyone has a gender-related story to tell. I don't know how I'd feel about these women-related posts were I a woman but frankly, there are way too many "men should do X" posts. I got enough shit to do. For what it's worth, I hire and work with women who I find competent and I always keep some in mind for future projects, but if anyone told me I "had" to do so, I'd very impolitely ask them to leave.

However, you cannot qualify anyone for participation in a discussion, nor should you try and move the discussion elsewhere. The fact that this discussion happens on HN is relevant: there is a cross-section of tech people here. The extremists, the moderates, the neutrals. That is what makes this format work.

I agree that a better empirical-source-to-anecdote ratio is desirable, but let's be careful to draw a clear distinction between I'd like to see more of this and HN should impose a concrete "barrier to participating in discussions about gender".

Inappropriate comments can be downvoted, abuse can be flagged. Comment-policing is another matter, and we don't want that.

Anecdotes are immensely important, you just need to be able to take them for what they are, and understand that you can't invalidate someone's personal experiences by saying that you've never seen anything like that. That's the biggest problem I tend to see with anecdotes.

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