-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.