5 ms·

My experience on HN is that stories about sexism often disappear quickly. It's often that I click on a story on the front page to read the comments, only to see

My experience on HN is that stories about sexism often disappear quickly. It's often that I click on a story on the front page to read the comments, only to see it flagged a few moments later. My explanation is that there is a significant number of HN readers that flag stories about sexism in tech because they don't believe them, but of course I don't have any evidence for that.

pheldagryph 9y ago
> but of course I don't have any evidence for that. I concur with your hypothesis; there're often comments on these links that would serve as evidence. I'm sure some people are just being contrarian for fun and karma, and some would just prefer to see more links specific to technologies and not 'Silicon Valley "culture"'... but some of the comments REALLY make me scratch my head.
FT_intern 9y ago
Anything that isn't scientific or technical in nature gets downvoted, including posts from the other end of the spectrum like false rape accusations and gamergate. The exception is news from the large tech companies and unicorns. I appreciate this community driven filter after being bombarded by inflammatory headlines, ideologies and news all day. It filters out "political" and "controversial" topics very well.
jasonkostempski 9y ago
It's seems more likely that, like me, they flag them because they clearly fall into the Off-Topic category of the HN guidelines.
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  Were they off-topic in Uber's case? I'm not sure how something that took down Travis Kalanick isn't relevant on HN.
  - weberc2 9y ago
    I imagine people are more likely to flag a boring off-topic story than an interesting off-topic story. "interesting" probably being some function of relevance to the reader.
  - jasonkostempski 9y ago
    Yes. Some guy involved in scandal at company that provides a service that happens to be done through a computer is not "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity". It at least falls under the categories of: crime that is not evidence of some interesting new phenomenon; maybe pratfalls; and, considering I saw it on The Today Show before HN, it's definitely covered on TV News. That's 3 of 7 stated off-topic categories. I'm not usually a stickler for these kinds of rules but it has gotten to be too much as of late. I understand it comes in waves and usually goes away, but when the wave hits, the only tool we have to fight it is the "flag". The topics don't go unnoticed, I'm sure HN isn't the only forum most people here visit. I occasionally partake in the conversations around this kind of story (not as a guideline Nazi), usually on Reddit, where it's expected. The most I'm ever going to do about problems like this are to not be part of and discourage behavior like it in areas of my life I have actual control over, so I don't want to be angered hourly by stories I can't or won't do anything about directly. The guidelines seem to imply this site is supposed to be a place that aligns with that and, for the most part, it does, except when it doesn't, and that is what I think "flag" is for.
weberc2 9y ago
I didn't flag, and very rarely do I flag, but I can see why sexism stories don't do well here: 1. Many "stories about sexism" simply aren't persuasive. They present some gap and leave the reader to assume sexism was at fault. These stories are almost always lazy, misleading, and biased. 2. Other stories are allegations of harassment. Either there is abundant evidence of guilt and the comments are boring because everyone agrees that the accused shouldn't have done a thing or the evidence is inconclusive and the comments are boring because of all of the pointless, unsupported arguments. Maybe there are some interesting subthreads in the comments, but the signal to noise ratio is low.

pheldagryph 9y ago

> but of course I don't have any evidence for that. I concur with your hypothesis; there're often comments on these links that would serve as evidence. I'm sure some people are just being contrarian for fun and karma, and some would just prefer to see more links specific to technologies and not 'Silicon Valley "culture"'... but some of the comments REALLY make me scratch my head.

FT_intern 9y ago

Anything that isn't scientific or technical in nature gets downvoted, including posts from the other end of the spectrum like false rape accusations and gamergate. The exception is news from the large tech companies and unicorns. I appreciate this community driven filter after being bombarded by inflammatory headlines, ideologies and news all day. It filters out "political" and "controversial" topics very well.

jasonkostempski 9y ago

It's seems more likely that, like me, they flag them because they clearly fall into the Off-Topic category of the HN guidelines.

ceejayoz 9y ago
Were they off-topic in Uber's case? I'm not sure how something that took down Travis Kalanick isn't relevant on HN.
- weberc2 9y ago
  I imagine people are more likely to flag a boring off-topic story than an interesting off-topic story. "interesting" probably being some function of relevance to the reader.
- jasonkostempski 9y ago
  Yes. Some guy involved in scandal at company that provides a service that happens to be done through a computer is not "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity". It at least falls under the categories of: crime that is not evidence of some interesting new phenomenon; maybe pratfalls; and, considering I saw it on The Today Show before HN, it's definitely covered on TV News. That's 3 of 7 stated off-topic categories. I'm not usually a stickler for these kinds of rules but it has gotten to be too much as of late. I understand it comes in waves and usually goes away, but when the wave hits, the only tool we have to fight it is the "flag". The topics don't go unnoticed, I'm sure HN isn't the only forum most people here visit. I occasionally partake in the conversations around this kind of story (not as a guideline Nazi), usually on Reddit, where it's expected. The most I'm ever going to do about problems like this are to not be part of and discourage behavior like it in areas of my life I have actual control over, so I don't want to be angered hourly by stories I can't or won't do anything about directly. The guidelines seem to imply this site is supposed to be a place that aligns with that and, for the most part, it does, except when it doesn't, and that is what I think "flag" is for.

weberc2 9y ago

I didn't flag, and very rarely do I flag, but I can see why sexism stories don't do well here: 1. Many "stories about sexism" simply aren't persuasive. They present some gap and leave the reader to assume sexism was at fault. These stories are almost always lazy, misleading, and biased. 2. Other stories are allegations of harassment. Either there is abundant evidence of guilt and the comments are boring because everyone agrees that the accused shouldn't have done a thing or the evidence is inconclusive and the comments are boring because of all of the pointless, unsupported arguments. Maybe there are some interesting subthreads in the comments, but the signal to noise ratio is low.