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zevyoura was asserting that the behavior seen on twitter is not representative of our community, and that those sentiments are isolated to a set of bad actors.

zevyoura was asserting that the behavior seen on twitter is not representative of our community, and that those sentiments are isolated to a set of bad actors. My assertion is that there is a substantial number of people who share that same ill will here on hacker news. Most of the threads that have been posted to HN have been dog piles of hating on Adria Richards. So the question is are those people new and in fact not representative of HN? Or are they people who have been around for a while, and have made substantive contributions to the community (using karma as a proxy measure)?

doktrin 14y ago
I understand what you are trying to quantify, but I think you may be conflating sentiment. zevyoura was responding directly to the GP's comment which made reference to use of the word "cunt" as well as threats / wishes of rape (and worse). The assertion being that the tech community was not responsible for some of the most hateful vitriol, none of which (AFAIK) was mirrored on HN. Assuming that in fact all thread contributions were in opposition, it seems uncharitable to infer that simply because a HN contributor disagrees with Adria's actions that they are also somehow equivalent to the worst offenders on Twitter, FB and the like. As zevyoura mentioned, there may be overlap - but IMHO this isn't as quantifiable an assertion as you make it out to be.
katbyte 14y ago
Aren't the names of new users shown in green? So unless they already had accounts waiting around then people new to hackers news would stand out pretty easily.
jiggy2011 14y ago
A lot of people on HN were critical of Adria Richards but I didn't see any of the extreme hate speech that I saw on some other forums towards her. I'm sure it would be naive to believe that there was 0 overlap, but HN (and most programming sites) are not bastions of hate speech.
Semaphor 14y ago
I usually stay away from twitter, but reading through some reddit threads (Seen nothing hateful on HN at all), only the communities made up mostly of idiots had any hate speech (SRS, SRSucks and MensRight)
ryguytilidie 14y ago
You seem to have a super inconsistent burden of proof. -Poster above who says hacker news posters are typically sexist. No problem whatsoever, no burden of proof needed. -Person responds and says they disagree that this represents HN posts. You respond and demand that they produce quantifiable proof. -You then go on to assert that hacker news posters are like this, based on 0 quantifiable evidence, but just your hunch. How do you make a point like that and not realize how unfair/unrealistic you're being?
- knowtheory 14y ago
  Er? No? I said if he wanted to quantify his claim, he could do so, and recommended a course of action. He said he didn't have the time/effort to do so. All i was asserting was that my hunch was contrary to his. That's the perfect place for an experiment. Given that we don't have any evidence in front of us, we just have his hunch and my hunch. I'm not asserting anything beyond that.
  - ryguytilidie 14y ago
    "You are making a quantifiable assertion. If you'd really like to back up the claim, go grab some of the threads on this subject, and spider the account pages of the people posting to the threads." My problem is simply that you demanded this of guy who disagreed with you, but you did not demand it from anyone who agreed with you. Its about the most biased/unfair way of making an argument possible.

doktrin 14y ago

I understand what you are trying to quantify, but I think you may be conflating sentiment. zevyoura was responding directly to the GP's comment which made reference to use of the word "cunt" as well as threats / wishes of rape (and worse). The assertion being that the tech community was not responsible for some of the most hateful vitriol, none of which (AFAIK) was mirrored on HN. Assuming that in fact all thread contributions were in opposition, it seems uncharitable to infer that simply because a HN contributor disagrees with Adria's actions that they are also somehow equivalent to the worst offenders on Twitter, FB and the like. As zevyoura mentioned, there may be overlap - but IMHO this isn't as quantifiable an assertion as you make it out to be.

katbyte 14y ago

Aren't the names of new users shown in green? So unless they already had accounts waiting around then people new to hackers news would stand out pretty easily.

jiggy2011 14y ago

A lot of people on HN were critical of Adria Richards but I didn't see any of the extreme hate speech that I saw on some other forums towards her. I'm sure it would be naive to believe that there was 0 overlap, but HN (and most programming sites) are not bastions of hate speech.

Semaphor 14y ago

I usually stay away from twitter, but reading through some reddit threads (Seen nothing hateful on HN at all), only the communities made up mostly of idiots had any hate speech (SRS, SRSucks and MensRight)

ryguytilidie 14y ago

You seem to have a super inconsistent burden of proof. -Poster above who says hacker news posters are typically sexist. No problem whatsoever, no burden of proof needed. -Person responds and says they disagree that this represents HN posts. You respond and demand that they produce quantifiable proof. -You then go on to assert that hacker news posters are like this, based on 0 quantifiable evidence, but just your hunch. How do you make a point like that and not realize how unfair/unrealistic you're being?

knowtheory 14y ago
Er? No? I said if he wanted to quantify his claim, he could do so, and recommended a course of action. He said he didn't have the time/effort to do so. All i was asserting was that my hunch was contrary to his. That's the perfect place for an experiment. Given that we don't have any evidence in front of us, we just have his hunch and my hunch. I'm not asserting anything beyond that.
- ryguytilidie 14y ago
  "You are making a quantifiable assertion. If you'd really like to back up the claim, go grab some of the threads on this subject, and spider the account pages of the people posting to the threads." My problem is simply that you demanded this of guy who disagreed with you, but you did not demand it from anyone who agreed with you. Its about the most biased/unfair way of making an argument possible.