4 ms·

If social issues are more likely than the average story to trigger aspects of the ranking system that results in them disappearing, the ranking system is biased

by mjg59 12y ago

If social issues are more likely than the average story to trigger aspects of the ranking system that results in them disappearing, the ranking system is biased against social issues. The fact that it's also biased against various other topics is irrelevant to the point I was making - you've constructed a ranking system that makes it almost impossible to maintain visibility of stories about diversity. In an era where the lack of diversity in our industry is so extreme and stories about harassment so visible that the mainstream media have picked up on it, that seems like a problem.

waterlesscloud 12y ago
Given how often diversity stories are on the front page, there doesn't seem to be much of a problem getting such stories visibility. In fact, the top story all day long today has been a diversity story, with a massive number of comments on just about every possible aspect of the story.
tptacek 12y ago
My guess is that I fall right alongside you in terms of the valence of my opinions about diversity, "meritocracy", and the working culture of the San Francisco Bay Area. I'd even hazard a guess that my level of militancy on those topics is similar to yours. I am a reliable flagger of diversity stories that I perceive as inviting flame wars --- even though I'm also a willing participant in those flamewars, as you can quickly find out from the search bar below. What I'd like more people to consider is that HN can't be all things to all people. I find the site personally interesting, have met several friends here, and have extracted considerable professional value from it. Those are all very important things to me. Meanwhile: there's a whole big wide Internet out there that can host discussions and debates on social issues of all stripes. If those debates, hosted here, are going to rip the site up (and evidence suggests they will): not worth it. There are people whose opinions I respect a great deal --- Maciej Ceglowski being a good example --- who strongly disagree with me on this point. Of course I might not be right about this. I'd just say, be careful about assuming that the bias is in favor of a status quo on the substantive issues. For a lot of us, this is a process issue.

by mjg59 12y ago

waterlesscloud 12y ago

Given how often diversity stories are on the front page, there doesn't seem to be much of a problem getting such stories visibility. In fact, the top story all day long today has been a diversity story, with a massive number of comments on just about every possible aspect of the story.

tptacek 12y ago

My guess is that I fall right alongside you in terms of the valence of my opinions about diversity, "meritocracy", and the working culture of the San Francisco Bay Area. I'd even hazard a guess that my level of militancy on those topics is similar to yours. I am a reliable flagger of diversity stories that I perceive as inviting flame wars --- even though I'm also a willing participant in those flamewars, as you can quickly find out from the search bar below. What I'd like more people to consider is that HN can't be all things to all people. I find the site personally interesting, have met several friends here, and have extracted considerable professional value from it. Those are all very important things to me. Meanwhile: there's a whole big wide Internet out there that can host discussions and debates on social issues of all stripes. If those debates, hosted here, are going to rip the site up (and evidence suggests they will): not worth it. There are people whose opinions I respect a great deal --- Maciej Ceglowski being a good example --- who strongly disagree with me on this point. Of course I might not be right about this. I'd just say, be careful about assuming that the bias is in favor of a status quo on the substantive issues. For a lot of us, this is a process issue.