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This has been flagged, and I would like to speak to why it shouldn't have been. HackerNews is a site for hackers, and among hackers there is still a wide cohort

This has been flagged, and I would like to speak to why it shouldn't have been. HackerNews is a site for hackers, and among hackers there is still a wide cohort of people who will absolutely deny that women face (and more generally, marginalised people) do not face hate for who they are. This ought to stay up, just so we have another very visible example of what tonnes of people go through.

waihtis 6y ago
Per the guidelines, hacker news is a "site for things that hackers might find interesting." Based on that, having the sufficient amount of flaggings suggests that hackers do not find this interesting. I see why it is important to highlight this, but don't see a reason why HN is the right place for it.
- monkin 6y ago
  Because it talks about harassment in IT? Those trolls or “kids” as few people names them, are in most cases HN target audience. :)
  - waihtis 6y ago
    > Those trolls or “kids” as few people names them, are in most cases HN target audience. :) Not that I've spent a meaningful amount of time on any "chan", but based on my limited understanding just reducing HN and 4chan into "tech sites" is insufficient. Again, the flaggings are the obvious signal of what interests people here. Why enforce arbitrary moderation on top?
    - monkin 6y ago
      Yes, for me it’s obvious signal that most of them was hurt by this. It’s not about interest.
      - waihtis 6y ago
        > It’s not about interest. How do you know? Example: I flag, on every opportunity, posts related to US politics. It's not because I'm "hurt" or annoyed by US politics, it's because I have close to zero interest in them and don't want that to be a content category that takes up space in HN from the actual interesting stuff. I bet many feel the same for posts about social issues like this, whether it's morally right or wrong.
        monkin 6y ago
        This social issue is tied with IT, HN and communities/companies alike. It shouldn’t be flagged because it’s hard for many, it should be talked about. Women in tech are treated like second class citizens. But maybe i spent too much time in tech social media and I see those patterns regularly. Eg. Abuse woman online, if she starts talking about it, discredit her skills, and try to humiliate as much as possible, presenting it as a snowflake kind of attitude. All of this is typical “nice guy” kind of shit.
        BTCOG 6y ago
        This is not an issue tied to IT any more than it's an issue tied to a corner store gas station. You cannot regulate morality.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- eesmith 6y ago
  You write: "having the sufficient amount of flaggings suggests that hackers do not find this interesting". I think you have misread the dynamics. To start, most people don't flag something just because it's not interesting. I don't - do you? The piece describes coordinated harassment against the author, by software developers. How many people does it take to flag something on HN? How many people are involved in that coordinated harassment. Can you therefore conclude that the flagging is not part of that broader coordinated harassment? I ... don't think so. This coordinated harassment is part of a larger subculture of harassment against women in tech. As an example, 13 years ago Kathy Sierra withdrew from online life due to harassment. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Sierra#Harassment_and_withdrawal_from_online_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Sierra#Harassment_and_wi... 'Scoble said "[W]henever I post a video of a female technologist there invariably are snide remarks about body parts and other things that simply wouldn't happen if the interviewee were a man."'. As the piece points out, silence - and flagging is an attempt to silence - is one of many tactics used by harassers. Given the context, you might therefore ask why "hackers do not find this interesting". Is it because a non-trivial number of hackers are sexist, and empathize with the harassment against women in tech, so flag in order to silence? Or is it because hackers are tired of reading about how sexist the tech field is and want HN as their safe space? Or they feel powerless to change things so flagging is a way of sticking their head in the sand? Or, really, you should rephrase the question entirely. Don't interpret flagging as a signal for interesting/not interesting, but see it as signal for "should not be on HN" - of which 'not interesting' is only a (small, IMO) part of it.
  - waihtis 6y ago
    You're completely right - I misworded the "interesting" part, when I did in fact mean "on-topic." However, I don't think it changes my ultimate point. All the same, an (assumedly) big enough populace decided this was not on topic. You make a number of good points, which I won't argue with, except this one: > Given the context, you might therefore ask why "hackers do not find this interesting". Is it because a non-trivial number of hackers are sexist, and empathize with the harassment against women in tech, so flag in order to silence? I you're forgetting a very significant populace of "I have a millions issues I could worry about at any given point and just cannot provide meaningful resources to worry about this specific one."
- gtf21 6y ago
  I'm not sure you can draw that conclusion. A significant number of people "flagging" something as uninteresting _to them_ does not necessarily indicate that it is uninteresting to "hackers". People have all sorts of reasons for flagging, but they should normally be positive ones e.g. "this violates some guideline and here's why", not "I do not find this interesting and therefore no-one else will".
  - waihtis 6y ago
    Correct- "interesting" was poor wording here, should have been "on-topic."
- pwinnski 6y ago
  A "sufficient amount of flaggings" does not suggest that "hackers do not find this interesting." It suggests that some percentage of users find it un-interesting, or want all of us to avoid it, which is not the same thing.
  - waihtis 6y ago
    Then your problem is with the HN guidelines, as they specifically mention flagging as a way to filter out ”off-topic” content.
- schwartzworld 6y ago
  what about all the "hackers" who found it interesting and didn't flag it?
uniqueid 6y ago
I also think the mods should manually unflag this. The events in the article are interesting, and the issue of trolling is currently a hot-topic in tech. I could understand people flagging it if she went overboard making political prescriptions, but her essay is pretty tame on that front.
b0rsuk 6y ago
I also think this shouldn't be flagged. What I personally dislike on sites like this is that anonymous downvoting often works like anonymous ostracism. Many times when some of my comments are downvoted I would at least like to know why I was downvoted. Perhaps there should be a way to post anonymous comments for the purposes of downvoting someone. More generally, rating all comments and submissions on a scale is wrong for some topics. In some cases there's no right or wrong way to do it, only tradeoffs and context. The +/- voting system has simplistic appeal, but is also a bit archaic.
- davidwitt415 6y ago
  Agree. Imo downvotes are actually a form of cancelling.
  - BTCOG 6y ago
    I absolutely agree. It does constantly get used around here just to silence the narrative of something the downvoter doesn't like. I'd posture it mostly gets used for that, and a small fraction of the time is it used correctly or does it serve a "good faith" action.
trabant00 6y ago
> among hackers there is still a wide cohort of people who will absolutely deny that women face That was one of the points of the trolls which is right: this woman is not a hacker. The way they go about it obviously is puerile, but the point still stands.
- Max_Mustermann 6y ago
  How do you define "hacker"?
square_usual 6y ago
Arrgh, my brain ate up the middle sentence - I meant to say: "women (and more generally, marginalised people) face hate for who they are."

waihtis 6y ago

Per the guidelines, hacker news is a "site for things that hackers might find interesting." Based on that, having the sufficient amount of flaggings suggests that hackers do not find this interesting. I see why it is important to highlight this, but don't see a reason why HN is the right place for it.

monkin 6y ago
Because it talks about harassment in IT? Those trolls or “kids” as few people names them, are in most cases HN target audience. :)
- waihtis 6y ago
  > Those trolls or “kids” as few people names them, are in most cases HN target audience. :) Not that I've spent a meaningful amount of time on any "chan", but based on my limited understanding just reducing HN and 4chan into "tech sites" is insufficient. Again, the flaggings are the obvious signal of what interests people here. Why enforce arbitrary moderation on top?
  - monkin 6y ago
    Yes, for me it’s obvious signal that most of them was hurt by this. It’s not about interest.
    - waihtis 6y ago
      > It’s not about interest. How do you know? Example: I flag, on every opportunity, posts related to US politics. It's not because I'm "hurt" or annoyed by US politics, it's because I have close to zero interest in them and don't want that to be a content category that takes up space in HN from the actual interesting stuff. I bet many feel the same for posts about social issues like this, whether it's morally right or wrong.
      - monkin 6y ago
        This social issue is tied with IT, HN and communities/companies alike. It shouldn’t be flagged because it’s hard for many, it should be talked about. Women in tech are treated like second class citizens. But maybe i spent too much time in tech social media and I see those patterns regularly. Eg. Abuse woman online, if she starts talking about it, discredit her skills, and try to humiliate as much as possible, presenting it as a snowflake kind of attitude. All of this is typical “nice guy” kind of shit.
        BTCOG 6y ago
        This is not an issue tied to IT any more than it's an issue tied to a corner store gas station. You cannot regulate morality.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
eesmith 6y ago
You write: "having the sufficient amount of flaggings suggests that hackers do not find this interesting". I think you have misread the dynamics. To start, most people don't flag something just because it's not interesting. I don't - do you? The piece describes coordinated harassment against the author, by software developers. How many people does it take to flag something on HN? How many people are involved in that coordinated harassment. Can you therefore conclude that the flagging is not part of that broader coordinated harassment? I ... don't think so. This coordinated harassment is part of a larger subculture of harassment against women in tech. As an example, 13 years ago Kathy Sierra withdrew from online life due to harassment. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Sierra#Harassment_and_withdrawal_from_online_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Sierra#Harassment_and_wi... 'Scoble said "[W]henever I post a video of a female technologist there invariably are snide remarks about body parts and other things that simply wouldn't happen if the interviewee were a man."'. As the piece points out, silence - and flagging is an attempt to silence - is one of many tactics used by harassers. Given the context, you might therefore ask why "hackers do not find this interesting". Is it because a non-trivial number of hackers are sexist, and empathize with the harassment against women in tech, so flag in order to silence? Or is it because hackers are tired of reading about how sexist the tech field is and want HN as their safe space? Or they feel powerless to change things so flagging is a way of sticking their head in the sand? Or, really, you should rephrase the question entirely. Don't interpret flagging as a signal for interesting/not interesting, but see it as signal for "should not be on HN" - of which 'not interesting' is only a (small, IMO) part of it.
- waihtis 6y ago
  You're completely right - I misworded the "interesting" part, when I did in fact mean "on-topic." However, I don't think it changes my ultimate point. All the same, an (assumedly) big enough populace decided this was not on topic. You make a number of good points, which I won't argue with, except this one: > Given the context, you might therefore ask why "hackers do not find this interesting". Is it because a non-trivial number of hackers are sexist, and empathize with the harassment against women in tech, so flag in order to silence? I you're forgetting a very significant populace of "I have a millions issues I could worry about at any given point and just cannot provide meaningful resources to worry about this specific one."
gtf21 6y ago
I'm not sure you can draw that conclusion. A significant number of people "flagging" something as uninteresting _to them_ does not necessarily indicate that it is uninteresting to "hackers". People have all sorts of reasons for flagging, but they should normally be positive ones e.g. "this violates some guideline and here's why", not "I do not find this interesting and therefore no-one else will".
- waihtis 6y ago
  Correct- "interesting" was poor wording here, should have been "on-topic."
pwinnski 6y ago
A "sufficient amount of flaggings" does not suggest that "hackers do not find this interesting." It suggests that some percentage of users find it un-interesting, or want all of us to avoid it, which is not the same thing.
- waihtis 6y ago
  Then your problem is with the HN guidelines, as they specifically mention flagging as a way to filter out ”off-topic” content.
schwartzworld 6y ago
what about all the "hackers" who found it interesting and didn't flag it?

uniqueid 6y ago

I also think the mods should manually unflag this. The events in the article are interesting, and the issue of trolling is currently a hot-topic in tech. I could understand people flagging it if she went overboard making political prescriptions, but her essay is pretty tame on that front.

b0rsuk 6y ago

I also think this shouldn't be flagged. What I personally dislike on sites like this is that anonymous downvoting often works like anonymous ostracism. Many times when some of my comments are downvoted I would at least like to know why I was downvoted. Perhaps there should be a way to post anonymous comments for the purposes of downvoting someone. More generally, rating all comments and submissions on a scale is wrong for some topics. In some cases there's no right or wrong way to do it, only tradeoffs and context. The +/- voting system has simplistic appeal, but is also a bit archaic.

davidwitt415 6y ago
Agree. Imo downvotes are actually a form of cancelling.
- BTCOG 6y ago
  I absolutely agree. It does constantly get used around here just to silence the narrative of something the downvoter doesn't like. I'd posture it mostly gets used for that, and a small fraction of the time is it used correctly or does it serve a "good faith" action.

trabant00 6y ago

> among hackers there is still a wide cohort of people who will absolutely deny that women face That was one of the points of the trolls which is right: this woman is not a hacker. The way they go about it obviously is puerile, but the point still stands.

Max_Mustermann 6y ago
How do you define "hacker"?

square_usual 6y ago

Arrgh, my brain ate up the middle sentence - I meant to say: "women (and more generally, marginalised people) face hate for who they are."