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The problem is, that the assumption "Women get responded to differently here" is just impossible to check, as this is an anonymous forum and you can choose the

The problem is, that the assumption "Women get responded to differently here" is just impossible to check, as this is an anonymous forum and you can choose the login name you want and their is no gender data associated with you (which is obviously fantastic). In particular I would assume there are many people here that just do not give a fuck about who writes comments, at least I rarely check the user name. > I appear to have the highest karma of any openly female member and I am thousands short of the leaderboard. Although I am not sure how important that is (HN Karma), I would say you can not know that, as this implies, that you know the gender of the top thousand HN commenters?

Mz 10y ago
I am not the only person who has observed that women get responded to differently here. You do not have to (in your words) "give a fuck who writes comments" to respond differently to a population that is likely to have a different set of experiences and a different way of expressing themselves. > I appear to have the highest karma of any openly female member and I am thousands short of the leaderboard. Although I am not sure how important that is (HN Karma), I would say you can not know that, as this implies, that you know the gender of the top thousand HN commenters? I phrased that very carefully and it is factually correct in the way it is phrased. No, I do not know the gender of all members. Like I said, if you want to be pendantic, whatever. But, yes, I can know for a fact that I appear to have the highest karma of any openly female member and I sure as hell know for a fact that I am thousands short of the leaderboard. That last detail is very easily checked.
- protomikron 10y ago
  > You do not have to give a fuck who writes comments to respond differently to a population that is likely to have a different set of experiences and a different way of expressing themselves. I am not sure I understand your point here, but if I do not care who writes the post, the only information that would leak the gender is the comment itself, and I do not think that one could reliable deduce the gender of a commenter by inspecting the comment (considering the comments in most HN discussions). Sure there might be discussions where this is possible, but I do not believe that this is the case for most of HN's discussions.
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    The issue isn't that people think "hey, woman, I'll treat her differently". The issue is that people with different experiences will communicate in different ways, hold different priorities, and they'll react differently to the same stories and comments. And they very well might decide that they don't want to spend their free time attempting to talk to people who they can't communicate effectively with because of some combination of the above. Feeling like you're one of the only people who understands your experiences in a community really sucks.
    - protomikron 10y ago
      > Feeling like you're one of the only people who understands your experiences in a community really sucks. Yeah that might be true. It is just hard for me to imagine why a non-male might be inhibited to comment on e.g. the current dtrace discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12806941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12806941)? Obviously this is cherry-picked, and there _was_ (and _is_) discrimination against women in the tech scene, but I would have guessed that HN is a positive example and I rarely stumble across discrimination here.
      - Mz 10y ago
        HN is a positive example. See my comments here: http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/01/before-hn.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/01/before-hn.ht... Perhaps you should go and actually read some of the stuff on my website that I have given you several links to already before continuing to argue here. I have written probably thousands of words already on my blog about the situation on HN and I am pretty even-handed and not all man-hating or man-bashing. I strongly suspect that the fact that I fundamentally like and respect men generally is germaine to my ability to a) get upvotes here and b) critique the forum without just being thrown out on my ear. But your behavior here is really problematic. And it is this kind of behavior that discourages a lot of women from participating. I am a woman. You refuse to take my word for it that women experience things differently. I didn't even expect you to take my word for it. I gave you links to supporting data. You do not appear to have done me the courtesy of reading any of that before jumping back in to continue to assert that I must simply be wrong because people on HN are so nice or something. This is really, really frustrating behavior for a woman to deal with and we face it constantly at every turn. Please do read the links you were given and, if you still have questions after that, come back and ask more informed questions later. Thanks.
tombone12 10y ago
Hello, first in the pile to beat up Mz, should we get started then? I'll back you up: "Boo boo Mz! Stop claiming things!"

Mz 10y ago

I am not the only person who has observed that women get responded to differently here. You do not have to (in your words) "give a fuck who writes comments" to respond differently to a population that is likely to have a different set of experiences and a different way of expressing themselves. > I appear to have the highest karma of any openly female member and I am thousands short of the leaderboard. Although I am not sure how important that is (HN Karma), I would say you can not know that, as this implies, that you know the gender of the top thousand HN commenters? I phrased that very carefully and it is factually correct in the way it is phrased. No, I do not know the gender of all members. Like I said, if you want to be pendantic, whatever. But, yes, I can know for a fact that I appear to have the highest karma of any openly female member and I sure as hell know for a fact that I am thousands short of the leaderboard. That last detail is very easily checked.

protomikron 10y ago
> You do not have to give a fuck who writes comments to respond differently to a population that is likely to have a different set of experiences and a different way of expressing themselves. I am not sure I understand your point here, but if I do not care who writes the post, the only information that would leak the gender is the comment itself, and I do not think that one could reliable deduce the gender of a commenter by inspecting the comment (considering the comments in most HN discussions). Sure there might be discussions where this is possible, but I do not believe that this is the case for most of HN's discussions.
- vertex-four 10y ago
  The issue isn't that people think "hey, woman, I'll treat her differently". The issue is that people with different experiences will communicate in different ways, hold different priorities, and they'll react differently to the same stories and comments. And they very well might decide that they don't want to spend their free time attempting to talk to people who they can't communicate effectively with because of some combination of the above. Feeling like you're one of the only people who understands your experiences in a community really sucks.
  - protomikron 10y ago
    > Feeling like you're one of the only people who understands your experiences in a community really sucks. Yeah that might be true. It is just hard for me to imagine why a non-male might be inhibited to comment on e.g. the current dtrace discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12806941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12806941)? Obviously this is cherry-picked, and there _was_ (and _is_) discrimination against women in the tech scene, but I would have guessed that HN is a positive example and I rarely stumble across discrimination here.
    - Mz 10y ago
      HN is a positive example. See my comments here: http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/01/before-hn.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/01/before-hn.ht... Perhaps you should go and actually read some of the stuff on my website that I have given you several links to already before continuing to argue here. I have written probably thousands of words already on my blog about the situation on HN and I am pretty even-handed and not all man-hating or man-bashing. I strongly suspect that the fact that I fundamentally like and respect men generally is germaine to my ability to a) get upvotes here and b) critique the forum without just being thrown out on my ear. But your behavior here is really problematic. And it is this kind of behavior that discourages a lot of women from participating. I am a woman. You refuse to take my word for it that women experience things differently. I didn't even expect you to take my word for it. I gave you links to supporting data. You do not appear to have done me the courtesy of reading any of that before jumping back in to continue to assert that I must simply be wrong because people on HN are so nice or something. This is really, really frustrating behavior for a woman to deal with and we face it constantly at every turn. Please do read the links you were given and, if you still have questions after that, come back and ask more informed questions later. Thanks.

tombone12 10y ago

Hello, first in the pile to beat up Mz, should we get started then? I'll back you up: "Boo boo Mz! Stop claiming things!"