4 ms·

On a meta-level, I think you are observing the vocal minority bias. As evidence, consider the fact that your comment currently holds the first comment position,

On a meta-level, I think you are observing the vocal minority bias. As evidence, consider the fact that your comment currently holds the first comment position, suggesting that it received a significant amount of upvotes relative to the other comments. I observe the same effect on other, similar, threads, where the first comment tends to be a response to the overwhelming "If it's just for women, it's sexism, same as if we said something was just for men" you are observing.

steveklabnik 13y ago
> suggesting that it received a significant amount of upvotes relative to the other comments. This is not strictly true, position is based on a lot of factors.
- teh_klev 13y ago
  Please explain these other factors, I am genuinely interested. How do top comments stay top whilst accumulating a huge number of polar opposite commentary?
  - steveklabnik 13y ago
    > How do top comments stay top whilst accumulating a huge number of polar opposite commentary? Note that this is not what I said. I just said that votes are not the only factor. > On the front page, by points divided by a power of the time since they were submitted. Comments in comment threads are ranked the same way. http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html Now, HN runs on a slightly modified version of news.arc, so we can't be 100% for sure. pg did give the formula a long time ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781417 TL;DR: time since the comment was left is often a factor.
tomasien 13y ago
There's a lot of factors here, but why would the majority be silent in tech? Is it because they feel like their voice is belittled?
- smtddr 13y ago
  I can tell you why I'm beginning to go silent. Because I'm done with these people bashing these events. Either they're highly-advanced trolls and we're all getting played REALLY HARD or these people are serious; if the latter then as far as I'm concern they're just awful people not much better than the folks at stormfront.org. I think any reasonable person understands it would be a waste of time trying to argue with stormfront.org members... and I'm just about ready to mentally tag these HN comments with the same level of lunacy & bigotry. ____ Preemptive: And yes, I know one of you is going to come along and throw the definition of bigotry back in my face. I don't care. I refuse to consider the ridiculous points of view I've been seeing on these gender stories in the same way I refuse to consider stormfront.org. You're all just trolls or really awful people. The end. I'm just super-happy that Ycombinator officially supports & organizes these kind of event to show YC is above your nonsense.
  - tomasien 13y ago
    Yeah. I.... Yeah. I'm so sorry.

steveklabnik 13y ago

> suggesting that it received a significant amount of upvotes relative to the other comments. This is not strictly true, position is based on a lot of factors.

teh_klev 13y ago
Please explain these other factors, I am genuinely interested. How do top comments stay top whilst accumulating a huge number of polar opposite commentary?
- steveklabnik 13y ago
  > How do top comments stay top whilst accumulating a huge number of polar opposite commentary? Note that this is not what I said. I just said that votes are not the only factor. > On the front page, by points divided by a power of the time since they were submitted. Comments in comment threads are ranked the same way. http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html Now, HN runs on a slightly modified version of news.arc, so we can't be 100% for sure. pg did give the formula a long time ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781417 TL;DR: time since the comment was left is often a factor.

tomasien 13y ago

There's a lot of factors here, but why would the majority be silent in tech? Is it because they feel like their voice is belittled?

smtddr 13y ago
I can tell you why I'm beginning to go silent. Because I'm done with these people bashing these events. Either they're highly-advanced trolls and we're all getting played REALLY HARD or these people are serious; if the latter then as far as I'm concern they're just awful people not much better than the folks at stormfront.org. I think any reasonable person understands it would be a waste of time trying to argue with stormfront.org members... and I'm just about ready to mentally tag these HN comments with the same level of lunacy & bigotry. ____ Preemptive: And yes, I know one of you is going to come along and throw the definition of bigotry back in my face. I don't care. I refuse to consider the ridiculous points of view I've been seeing on these gender stories in the same way I refuse to consider stormfront.org. You're all just trolls or really awful people. The end. I'm just super-happy that Ycombinator officially supports & organizes these kind of event to show YC is above your nonsense.
- tomasien 13y ago
  Yeah. I.... Yeah. I'm so sorry.