I don't know if this was the intention either, but when I see articles like this, I just think we as programmers are such divas sometimes.

That style of writing is extremely popular online and on Twitter. People love snark and entitlement when they agree with it

Maybe we should celebrate being divas!

Now I'm imagining Lady Gaga's "Fashion" in my head but the lyrics are about coding.

I was listening to Darknet Diaries yesterday and just found out Nerdcore music is a thing.

"when describing a product that many people use for free." There are no free services. Github is a product, the free features are there to onboard paying customers for their commercial repos.

However, yes, that kind of language over a dark theme is ridiculous and not persuading.

Maybe it's just my observation, but I find it quite interesting that only finds such tone-policing comments as yours when the author is a woman. Daily, I see much more abrasive blogs on HN: instead of lampooning them for asking GitHub to be better, they are not rarely lauded for their "brutal honesty" while often straight-up insulting the blog's target.

This is not meant to criticize you, OP, personally. Rather, I just want to point out a structural double standard.

-1 from me. I was put off from the beginning when she said the UI “sucked” or similar, didn’t know the author was a woman at that point. Believe me or don’t but that’s my story & I’m sticking to it.

+1000 to the author for raising specific accessibility concerns and contrasting (no pun intended) the colour palates with those of other sites. The old “dark gray on light gray; tiny text” style (see: daring fireball of days past) drives me nuts.

I think the author makes fantastic points and it’s unfortunate that the somewhat mean spirited language distracts from those points, leading to this discussion rather than a more substantive one about accessibility. Not the end of the world either way.

I do agree with your point overall but I find it so peculiar that the GP's tone-policing comment was the top one when I posted because, as you point out, her substantive point is so fantastic.

I honestly didn't notice the author's gender until you pointed it out, which led me to check the name. I simply read the article and agreed with most of the points, then came here to see the comments. In fact, I never attach a gender identity to authors or commenters unless something they say nudges me to check their name or username, or unless it's an author I'm familiar with.

Having said that, I think it's a safe bet to assume that one doesn't "only" find such tone policing comments when the author is a woman, because one almost always finds such tone-policing comments on hacker news whenever there's an opportunity to complain about tone.

Yes, you might not have seen her gender beforehand. But countless others have. I'm not saying GP went "oh a woman, better tone-police her". Rather, the gender of the author entered into our (mine as well) subconsciousness and combined there with implicit assumptions about gender roles and the 'proper' behavior of women. Any behavior that then doesn't fit the stereotype of diplomatic, kind, etc., elicits a stronger emotional reaction in us and makes us more like to write or upvote such a comment.

It is not that HN doesn't already have a "baseline obsession" with tone or that male authors never fall victim to this. But rather, one can observe a trend where such tone-policing comments are more likely to occur and get upvoted if the author is a woman. And on the flip-side, comments commending a harsher, "more" honest or rant-y tone are more likely to occur when the post was written by a male author.

I believe your argument is sensible, especially in society at large. What you lack is evidence that the kind of behavior you're describing happens on HN.

I don't know if it does or not but without evidence this is just conjecture from all sides.

If there's one thing I've learned in my time on HN it's that people here tend to be unaffected by subconscious bias, unlike normal people..

You are reading even more into the gender of the post than OP, and are policing how OP should think, and assuming that he is biased because he is male.

Consider that you may yourself be sexist.

HN is always criticizing the tone of any TFA regardless of gender. I’ve noticed it even more since seeing your exact accusation before.

You present no evidence either. I think comments like yours actually want their accusation to be true because it gives you some sort of power and moral clout.

TFA is written like a tweet. It’s indeed obnoxious. It should be somewhat of a red flag that you felt the need to bring up gender. It’s also a lazy accusation. Though the accusation is very trendy these days.

Sort of a backfire effect here. I didn't realize it was written by a woman until you mentioned it.

There should be an equivalent of Godwin's Law for gender.

No. On the other hand, why is it that some people seem to have become overly sensitive? I wish most people were as direct about their thoughts as they used to be.

Yes, GH is free, but being free does not mean they are above criticism.

This is not about criticism. This is about some moral grandstanding where none is appropriate.

EDIT: The contrast ratio of the author's website (background vs. main copy font color) is ca. 12.29, i.e. almost exactly that of GH dark mode (12.26) and which they claim is too low. So go figure.

Given this is the top voted comment, any other sentence that people find abrasive?

I reread the article a few times and i dont see that at all. It isn't even ranting. She put out some criticism, with some evidence and possible theory. And "hope", Github could change its mind. I quote

This is still a beta feature so I have hope.

This isn't GitHub! Do Better! with double exclamation market. Simply a call to action for something ( hopefully ) better. The we deserve part is a figure of speech.

Too entitled, particularly when things like Dark Reader[1] exist... You can just customize your own palette. My entire internet is in dark mode...

[1] https://darkreader.org/

I support the tone: freedom of expression. It could be harsh but certainly isn’t abusive.

What does freedom of expression have to do with anything? Freedom of expression != all opinions are correct and equally valid

Opinions can't be incorrect or invalid. That's why they're opinions.

Did I say something about the opinion being correct or valid?

No, but your reference to freedom of expression just scans a little oddly here because no one is claiming this person should be deplatformed or something.

Have you ever been on hacker news before?

Most people I know who uses GitHub daily are premium users. People who use GitHub for free are probably not going to be bothered by the dark mode.

I thought browsers used to let users change the default CSS. If sites had respected that people wouldn't be asking them for themes.

Lots of people now say “do better” as some kind of moral high ground grandstanding. It’s really pathetic.

Responding to tone : Criticizes the tone of the writing without addressing the substance of the argument.

It reads like a tweet.

Love it, calling out moral posturing while doing the same thing yourself.

It's Microsoft running a for-profit project on a freemium model not an act of charity. Criticizing how sloppy the choice of color palette was and suggesting one of the most valuable companies in the world should be able to do better has only become the natural thing to do. Time and time again we've been shown the only way to enact the most minor and least controversial changes is to make a bunch of noise in blog posts and call out the behemoths for their shortcomings.

And hell, if we extrapolate from this (shitty) line of thinking, maybe Microsoft was saying "Haha plebs if you want a dark mode that functions better you should stop being poor and only buy OLED monitors."