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I'm quite familiar with your comments here, I consider myself a fan (I too can be controversial). But my disagreement in this specific case is the accuracy of

I'm quite familiar with your comments here, I consider myself a fan (I too can be controversial). But my disagreement in this specific case is the accuracy of your description. In your prior comment, you seemed to be evaluating HN on an absolute basis, whereas this one seems to be mostly on a relative (to MetaFilter) basis. Indeed, HN is one of the best forums going, even as its popularity has grown which makes moderation difficult. That said, common descriptions of it bordering on perfection (mild hyperbole) seem innacurate to me. > I'm probably the only woman to have ever spent time on the leader board of HN, so I'm sort of a unique minority here and for that reason I make some effort to some degree to quietly let people know that I sincerely believe that HN is a place where you can get past your minority status if you will make an effort to read the guidelines and follow the guidelines, even when it feels like you are being ganged up on and have a minority view. Might this depend on which minority status you hold? If not, then does that not suggest some form of ~perfection &/or consistency in bias? I don't think it would shock too many people to discover that a forum frequented by hackers and silicon valley type are neutral to pro-equality when it comes to gender differences. This notion seems to align quite nicely with any news stories I read. But does it also follow (both logically and observationally) that this lack of bias necessarily holds for other dimensions, like political leanings? > It's not easy because you do need to keep following the guidelines... This depends to some degree on who you are and what you say. > I'm okay with you chalking this up to "personal opinion and she can't prove it." I'm not chalking it up to that, I was simply pointing out that you were describing HN in a manner that is literally not possible without access to significant quantities of voting data. My issue is not so much the bias around here, that I can live with - it's the widespread refusal to acknowledge that it (and other portions of reality) exists. Sometimes it gets rather absurd, imho. > The membership here will take you to task and demand you support your ideas with something substantive, but if you can meet that standard, the social climate here is not actually the usual BS where you get banned for making people uncomfortably aware that they are merely prejudiced assholes. People here will consider your minority view if you can adequately support it. I believe my comment history suggests things are not always as rosy as reflected in your personal experience. But worry not, I'm not losing a whole bunch of sleep over it. It is a very valuable learning experience, for my purposes. It's simultaneously depressing, and motivating.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
I consider myself a fan Thank you. That's nice to hear. I don't think HN borders on perfection and I don't think I said anything of the sort anywhere. I said stuff like: HN does a much better job than most platforms of allowing people to genuinely express a minority view. That's still a relative rating, not an absolute one. It does a better job than average. Your remark seems to generally agree with that, so I'm not sure I understand what the issue here is. I have not had an easy time here and at one point I left for 18 months in part because I felt it was too rough for me here. But I was also really sick at the time and homeless and "wherever you go, there you are." My primary reasons for taking a break were not, per se, "HN is a shit show and everyone there is mean to me!" I'm quite open about the fact that posting here as openly female was only "a bed of roses" if you are thinking of it in terms of the thorns. That opinion isn't one that is very welcome here. It gets a lot of push back. I've had college classes in things like Social Psychology and Negotiation and Conflict Management. I know something about best practices for dealing with difficult group dynamics. I'm not claiming there is no bias here. I'm not claiming things are always rosy and I used the word "hubbub" in my remark, above. I don't really understand why you think I am engaging in hyperbole and attributing some kind of perfection to the site. My very first comment was basically a recipe for how to weather the downvote storm and wait and see where it goes after that. And in my experience and opinion, it will go better if you actually follow the guidelines and don't start complaining about downvotes. As someone who attracts a lot of negative reactions on HN, my firsthand experience is that if you actually follow the guidelines and say nothing about the voting and wait and see, things will be less negative and a few hours later you may feel differently about how people are perceiving your comment because it may no longer be in the negatives and there may even be constructive engagement. And you are less likely to experience that if you start complaining about bias and about downvotes and about people disagreeing with you. I don't agree with you that I can't know what I know without spreadsheets full of data. I think I do know what I know based on having studied how social stuff works and having participated on a variety of forums over the years. Metafilter is not the only forum where I had really negative experiences and was ultimately banned. It's just the only one I happened to use as an example to try to illustrate my point in one particular remark.
- mistermann 6y ago

DoreenMichele 6y ago

I consider myself a fan Thank you. That's nice to hear. I don't think HN borders on perfection and I don't think I said anything of the sort anywhere. I said stuff like: HN does a much better job than most platforms of allowing people to genuinely express a minority view. That's still a relative rating, not an absolute one. It does a better job than average. Your remark seems to generally agree with that, so I'm not sure I understand what the issue here is. I have not had an easy time here and at one point I left for 18 months in part because I felt it was too rough for me here. But I was also really sick at the time and homeless and "wherever you go, there you are." My primary reasons for taking a break were not, per se, "HN is a shit show and everyone there is mean to me!" I'm quite open about the fact that posting here as openly female was only "a bed of roses" if you are thinking of it in terms of the thorns. That opinion isn't one that is very welcome here. It gets a lot of push back. I've had college classes in things like Social Psychology and Negotiation and Conflict Management. I know something about best practices for dealing with difficult group dynamics. I'm not claiming there is no bias here. I'm not claiming things are always rosy and I used the word "hubbub" in my remark, above. I don't really understand why you think I am engaging in hyperbole and attributing some kind of perfection to the site. My very first comment was basically a recipe for how to weather the downvote storm and wait and see where it goes after that. And in my experience and opinion, it will go better if you actually follow the guidelines and don't start complaining about downvotes. As someone who attracts a lot of negative reactions on HN, my firsthand experience is that if you actually follow the guidelines and say nothing about the voting and wait and see, things will be less negative and a few hours later you may feel differently about how people are perceiving your comment because it may no longer be in the negatives and there may even be constructive engagement. And you are less likely to experience that if you start complaining about bias and about downvotes and about people disagreeing with you. I don't agree with you that I can't know what I know without spreadsheets full of data. I think I do know what I know based on having studied how social stuff works and having participated on a variety of forums over the years. Metafilter is not the only forum where I had really negative experiences and was ultimately banned. It's just the only one I happened to use as an example to try to illustrate my point in one particular remark.

mistermann 6y ago