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Insightful. But not Hacker News.

kylec 17y ago
I swear, "not Hacker News" seems to be the overriding meme here on HN, and it's getting old. Sure this article's partially about feminism, but it's also about academic integrity, which I think falls well under the purview of "Hacker News". Not to mention the fact that CS and programming are often the focus of gender difference issues by feminists.
- maggie 17y ago
  CS and programming are actually /not/ often the focus of gender issues by feminists. The discussion on the gender-balance in said fields is brought up internally, most of the time, if not always. The 'feminist' crowd (gender theorists, women's studies academics, etc.) is honestly not that interested, or aware, of our problems.
  - johnnybgoode 17y ago
    > The discussion...is brought up internally, most of the time, if not always. You may be right, but I suspect the reason for the above has something to do with the influence of feminists.
    - maggie 17y ago
      I doubt it. That implies that the problems women face in computing (by being women) historically and currently are myths and only exist if you think about 'em. They aren't, and there's plenty of evidence to show otherwise. email me if you really want a lit. review on the subject.
      - johnnybgoode 17y ago
        No, that's not what I was implying. I'm suggesting that the issue would be brought up less often if feminists did not have significant influence in our society. I can put a positive spin on it if you prefer: Thanks to the work of feminists over the past few decades, women and men in computing know well enough to bring up the issue of sexism in their field on their own.
      - rewt66 17y ago
        Data point: My mother was a programmer back in the 1950s. She wrote numerical programs that simulated missile trajectories... in octal. She thought it was great when she got an assembler. I don't recall her ever saying anything about discrimination on the job. The thing she griped about was being told by a math professor that math was no place for a woman. Maybe there are some gating effects happening that steer women away from trying technical fields? It seems to me that, within most software places, you belong if you know your stuff. Nobody cares about your race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or other basis for "discrimination". We care if you can code. (If you can't code, and got the job as a token person-of-that-color/gender/sexual orientation, then we usually have a problem with that, but that's not the same as bias against that color or gender or sexual orientation.) That's the way it's been almost everywhere I've ever worked, and I've been in software for 25 years. So what I'm trying to say is, there's almost always room for some introspection, but maybe we're too hard on ourselves? Maybe the lack of women in software isn't really the software guys' fault?
  - gaius 17y ago
    That is because computer programming is (still) not a particularly prestigious job, it still suffers from negative stereotypes, nerd, geek, etc. Right now, we're under their radar. There is a reason feminists want us to say "chairperson" but don't care if you say "binman".
- cdr 17y ago
  What anybody thinks about it in a post is irrelevant. Upvote it (or not) if you think it belongs, flag it if you think it doesn't.
  - kragen 17y ago
    Maybe we should have a separate category for comments about the categorization of an article. 1. Δ Persistent Myths in Feminist Scholarship (chronicle.com) 35 points by kylec 2 hours ago | 11 comments | 28 relevance flames
    - DanielBMarkham 17y ago
      I think if you gave folks some public way of indicating their complain, instead of an anonymous/invisible flag, it might help. Sometimes people are just driven to do something publicly. After all, flagging might be the way HN works, but it's not necessarily the way people work.
- tptacek 17y ago
  This is an essay from an AEI fellow about gender politics. The fact that it centers on academia does give it a foothold on HN, but it's misleading to suggest that this editorial is more than a borderline Hacker News submission. I wouldn't flag it, but I wouldn't protest if it had gotten flagged off. There are hundreds and hundreds of similar articles, all epsilon from "Hacker-Newsworthy", that thankfully don't make it onto HN.
- davidw 17y ago
  > I swear, "not Hacker News" seems to be the overriding meme here on HN, and it's getting old. If people would post less of this sort of thing, then you wouldn't see it. Are you really interested in hacker / startup articles or do you just want to see "interesting" things? There are good subreddits for the latter. See: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=700644 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=700644
  - branden 17y ago
    http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups."
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
    - davidw 17y ago
      Taken at face value, this means that if you get enough people to vote for something, then it's ok, no matter how "off topic" it is. Since there is no check for "being a hacker" to join this site, presumably I could find a bunch of people interested in, say, the Tour de France, get them to join, and start voting up bike racing articles. Or for that matter, perhaps there are enough people already here interested in bike racing to vote up those articles.
      - branden 17y ago
        Hence the flag button and editors.
        davidw 17y ago
        So, effectively, there is some sort of "what should be here" standard. It is not just "anything goes" as per the guideline. This kind of article completely fails the "of more interest to hackers than other people" test, which I think is more relevant.
- kylec 17y ago
  http://www.google.com/search?q=%22not+hacker+news%22+site:news.ycombinator.com http://www.google.com/search?q=%22not+hacker+news%22+site:ne... yields "about 7,220 results" on Google

kylec 17y ago

I swear, "not Hacker News" seems to be the overriding meme here on HN, and it's getting old. Sure this article's partially about feminism, but it's also about academic integrity, which I think falls well under the purview of "Hacker News". Not to mention the fact that CS and programming are often the focus of gender difference issues by feminists.

maggie 17y ago
CS and programming are actually /not/ often the focus of gender issues by feminists. The discussion on the gender-balance in said fields is brought up internally, most of the time, if not always. The 'feminist' crowd (gender theorists, women's studies academics, etc.) is honestly not that interested, or aware, of our problems.
- johnnybgoode 17y ago
  > The discussion...is brought up internally, most of the time, if not always. You may be right, but I suspect the reason for the above has something to do with the influence of feminists.
  - maggie 17y ago
    I doubt it. That implies that the problems women face in computing (by being women) historically and currently are myths and only exist if you think about 'em. They aren't, and there's plenty of evidence to show otherwise. email me if you really want a lit. review on the subject.
    - johnnybgoode 17y ago
      No, that's not what I was implying. I'm suggesting that the issue would be brought up less often if feminists did not have significant influence in our society. I can put a positive spin on it if you prefer: Thanks to the work of feminists over the past few decades, women and men in computing know well enough to bring up the issue of sexism in their field on their own.
    - rewt66 17y ago
      Data point: My mother was a programmer back in the 1950s. She wrote numerical programs that simulated missile trajectories... in octal. She thought it was great when she got an assembler. I don't recall her ever saying anything about discrimination on the job. The thing she griped about was being told by a math professor that math was no place for a woman. Maybe there are some gating effects happening that steer women away from trying technical fields? It seems to me that, within most software places, you belong if you know your stuff. Nobody cares about your race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or other basis for "discrimination". We care if you can code. (If you can't code, and got the job as a token person-of-that-color/gender/sexual orientation, then we usually have a problem with that, but that's not the same as bias against that color or gender or sexual orientation.) That's the way it's been almost everywhere I've ever worked, and I've been in software for 25 years. So what I'm trying to say is, there's almost always room for some introspection, but maybe we're too hard on ourselves? Maybe the lack of women in software isn't really the software guys' fault?
- gaius 17y ago
  That is because computer programming is (still) not a particularly prestigious job, it still suffers from negative stereotypes, nerd, geek, etc. Right now, we're under their radar. There is a reason feminists want us to say "chairperson" but don't care if you say "binman".
cdr 17y ago
What anybody thinks about it in a post is irrelevant. Upvote it (or not) if you think it belongs, flag it if you think it doesn't.
- kragen 17y ago
  Maybe we should have a separate category for comments about the categorization of an article. 1. Δ Persistent Myths in Feminist Scholarship (chronicle.com) 35 points by kylec 2 hours ago | 11 comments | 28 relevance flames
  - DanielBMarkham 17y ago
    I think if you gave folks some public way of indicating their complain, instead of an anonymous/invisible flag, it might help. Sometimes people are just driven to do something publicly. After all, flagging might be the way HN works, but it's not necessarily the way people work.
tptacek 17y ago
This is an essay from an AEI fellow about gender politics. The fact that it centers on academia does give it a foothold on HN, but it's misleading to suggest that this editorial is more than a borderline Hacker News submission. I wouldn't flag it, but I wouldn't protest if it had gotten flagged off. There are hundreds and hundreds of similar articles, all epsilon from "Hacker-Newsworthy", that thankfully don't make it onto HN.
davidw 17y ago
> I swear, "not Hacker News" seems to be the overriding meme here on HN, and it's getting old. If people would post less of this sort of thing, then you wouldn't see it. Are you really interested in hacker / startup articles or do you just want to see "interesting" things? There are good subreddits for the latter. See: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=700644 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=700644
- branden 17y ago
  http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups."
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - davidw 17y ago
    Taken at face value, this means that if you get enough people to vote for something, then it's ok, no matter how "off topic" it is. Since there is no check for "being a hacker" to join this site, presumably I could find a bunch of people interested in, say, the Tour de France, get them to join, and start voting up bike racing articles. Or for that matter, perhaps there are enough people already here interested in bike racing to vote up those articles.
    - branden 17y ago
      Hence the flag button and editors.
      - davidw 17y ago
        So, effectively, there is some sort of "what should be here" standard. It is not just "anything goes" as per the guideline. This kind of article completely fails the "of more interest to hackers than other people" test, which I think is more relevant.
kylec 17y ago
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22not+hacker+news%22+site:news.ycombinator.com http://www.google.com/search?q=%22not+hacker+news%22+site:ne... yields "about 7,220 results" on Google