Why more women in a forum where apparently not many women want to participate is getting better? I mean, I'm black and we are also disproportionately represented here and I hope this to change sometime, but it would make HN atmost more suitable to me and other people of color, not necessarily better at what HN is made for.
s/is/would be
Are you asking what mechanism is causing improvement? Are you asking why it would be a good thing to have more women here? Or something else?
Because the rest of your paragraph seems to suggest it is fundamentally not a good thing and possibly actively harmful to either HN or YC or both, which makes it really challenging for me to try to engage you at all because it feels openly hostile to my very participation.
So I'm asking why should HN actively change itself to be more engaging to women? And how?
HN isn't required to do anything at all. It looks to me like both YC and the moderating staff of HN would like to foster diversity. That is their choice. I try to respect that fact.
I have worked hard at trying to fit in because I want to be here. I know a lot about social phenomenon. If one woman can figure it out, this will tend to open doors for others. That is simple reality and has nothing to do with me trying to change HN. In fact, to the degree that new women so often take it for granted that they are welcome here, have no idea how hard I have worked to fit in and how that makes it easier for them and then quite often are personally ugly to me, I often regret any role I have played in opening doors for other women here. It seems to be of zero benefit to me and to very often bite me in the butt.
Your hostility in this most recent comment seems to be much more blatant and not a matter of misunderstanding. So, if you will excuse me, I don't plan to engage you further.
All your replies to me were hostiles and some of them complaining about my hostility. I wasn't hostile at any time, my question was on the subject of the topic but every answer of yours you tried to frame me as hostile. Because you feel that women are hostilized here. I feel that black men are hostilized here too. By men and women. But most of the times I'm hostilized it is directly correlated to the angriness in some of my replies. I don't think that bring more black people ready to engage in flamewars about why there aren't many of us here will do any good to HN and neither them will enjoy the experience. Tech savvy black people will. And I think exactly the same about women on HN.
"Ask HN: What about women on HN?"
Also, there is no requirement here to be in tech. There are men on the leaderboard in other professions. There are plenty of respected members here who are teachers, doctors or lawyers. The suggestion that a woman or black person needs to be "tech savvy" is just another means to exclude them.
Since you are black, it really isn't in your best interest to suggest that people who are not white males need to pass additional tests to be here. And if you think flamewars will degrade the site, then look to the man in the mirror. Your anger is part of the problem.
I do all in my power to be the antithesis of an angry woman just here to start fights. I imagine my commitment to trying to engage in good faith in spite of it being an uphill battle to do so is a key element of how I became the first woman on the leaderboard.
Doesn't look like that at all. I weren't the one with weapons at hand in this thread.
> Since you are black, it really isn't in your best interest to suggest that people who are not white males need to pass additional tests to be here.
My only test is that someone here has to fit and add to this tech community to not feel hostilized otherwise it'd be in their best interest to find over time their position here in place of screaming out loud that they should be more accepted (of course, respecting the guidelines objectively, not subjectively). Show, don't tell. The same way you got your position in the leaderboard. I've remember reading a lot of comments from you (Mz?) that I sure upvoted because it contributed to the discussion.
As best I can tell, it started as a bunch of men in a male dominated culture at a time when it was mostly men posting online. It is a public forum. Women online seem to gravitate to more walled garden type environments. Women online often post anonymously. This forum has a professional emphasis and even men who post under a handle instead of under their name are often pretty open about their actual name. A lot of men at the top of the leaderboard are people whom you can find articles about or a page on their employer's site or something like that. So there is third party corroboration of their identity. This is something women seem to be less likely to have in the first place, and it was worse some years ago when this forum was getting formed.
Each of those norms are norms women have trouble meeting. The more individual things you add that are hard for women to meet, the more excluded women are.
It's a little like saying "You don't have to be male, you just have to be over 6 feet tall, able to bench press X amount of weight and have a beard." Even if they decide that having a beard is some arbitrary sexist requirement that they are willing to drop, you still will find very few women who can meet the standards required to participate.
(Disclaimer: I have barely slept and posting here at all is probably a bad idea on so little sleep.)
1) it's a male dominated culture
2) people somehow communicate they are men
3) women prefer posting anonymously
Interesting... and how about the news that get posted, do you think they read them but they just don't comment?
This is a new handle, but my original handle has 25k karma and is still on the leaderboard. As far as I know, I am the only woman on the leaderboard. If so, out of 100 names showing on the leaderboard, only one is a woman. This is really low even in comparison to the 17 percent figure often cited for female CEOs.
So, yeah, it is an overwhelmingly male forum, but I have been here over 8 years and I am fairly confident that the appearance of male domination is even worse than the reality. I see questions like yours from time to time, and the best I can tell you is that data over the years suggests that a) at least 2 to 3 percent of the active membership is female and b) this figure is probably a case of underreporting. There are probably more women here, it just doesn't look it.
It seems to me to be getting better.