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https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would fi

by qb45 9y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. I too normally dislike things disappearing from the front page in 5 minutes but I made an exception for this submission and flagged it because such stories are dime in a dozen and this one brings zero new information, solves nothing and mainly just perpetuates hostility.

KirinDave 9y ago
So you're saying you flagged this despite the fact that it is in not off-topic. Because you dislike the narrative it establishes?
- qb45 9y ago
  Do I need to repeat? I flagged it because such stories are dime in a dozen and this one brings zero new information¹, solves nothing² and mainly just perpetuates hostility³. 1. See the "off-topic" paragraph quoted above why it's relevant. And, BTW, this rule makes sense - when it comes to politics, usually both sides have already heard all arguments and if they still remain in disagreement, repetition is unlikely to bring anything but flamewar. 2. See paragraph above. 3. Which in itself might be a good reason, although I'm admittedly stretching it here because I selfishly refuse to take responsibility for other people's emotions and if I found this story interesting, I would have probably upvoted it. I upvoted that one for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14692038 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14692038 because I found TFA informative and there is nothing you can do about it. > Because you dislike the narrative it establishes? Absolutely, it's harmful because words like "hostile", "sexism", "harassment", etc suggest malicious intent which usually just isn't there. It antagonizes men who have no intention of harming women and scares women in situations when no harm was actually meant. It deprives women of ability to effectively complain by making them question whether it makes sense to bring it up with the offender at all. And even when they decide to talk about it, it pre-trains them to paint it as oppression which predictably gets reactions ranging from "WTF" to "we don't give a fuck, your paranoia is your problem".
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    The fact that you deliberately want to silence any conversation about how it can be bad is very telling about how you think women should behave in the workplace and respond to abuse. It's also a classic example of an asymmetric definition of discourse. It's only permissible to speak about things that paint you and yours in a positive light. > And even when they decide to talk about it, it pre-trains them to paint it as oppression which predictably gets reactions ranging from "WTF" to "we don't give a fuck, your paranoia is your problem". Just to recap this real fast: 1. You don't believe that men have intent to hurt women, even when they do. 2. You think that dismisses the impact and consequences of the behavior, both legally and morally. You imply that this is so BECAUSE... 3. If women realized the game is rigged towards men that will further undermine them. And pointing out to men that their actions are crass and inappropriate and in some cases illegal just angers them. 4. So ultimately she asked for it by sharing an article about difficulties she's faced in tech. She should have kept her mouth shut and not provoked the men around her. I want to stress this: You're attempting to gaslight people. You're dismissing toxic, abusive, and unprofessional behavior. You even grant that it can be these things, but somehow draw a line between then men and the consequences of their action and label it "intent". If the only thing that discriminates a man's actions between sexism and a joke is HIS internal mental state? Well then, it's sexism. You don't get to avoid the consequences of your actions in a shared setting, words are actions, therefore they can have consequences. For the speaker as well as those spoken to. As an aside... > because I found TFA informative and there is nothing you can do about it. I do not care even slightly about what you upvote. Upvotes are constructive. Flagging is meant to remove spam and obviously useless articles. Your spurious "dime a dozen" complaints don't fool anyone, don't defend your actions, don't conform to the guidelines given. You're misusing flags to sink stories that obviously a good number of people chose to upvote. Maybe stop censoring hacker news because you can't bear the truth.
tptacek 9y ago
You can do that, but if you abuse the flag button like that, your flag button is going to quietly stop working.
- qb45 9y ago
  Everybody knows it and I wouldn't be bringing attention to myself like that if I used flags often enough to care, I come here in part to read about all sorts of weird stuff people post and flagging is largely counterproductive to that. Plus I doubt that I'm going to have it disabled for merely selective enforcement of the official guidelines.
thewhaaa 9y ago
FYI, some commenters are organizing offsite their “defense” of this post: https://mobile.twitter.com/KirinDave/status/890211366698602496 https://mobile.twitter.com/KirinDave/status/8902113666986024...
sctb 9y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14868934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14868934 and marked it off-topic.
- KirinDave 9y ago
  Fair enough. Thanks for the note. I was confused.

by qb45 9y ago

KirinDave 9y ago

So you're saying you flagged this despite the fact that it is in not off-topic. Because you dislike the narrative it establishes?

qb45 9y ago
Do I need to repeat? I flagged it because such stories are dime in a dozen and this one brings zero new information¹, solves nothing² and mainly just perpetuates hostility³. 1. See the "off-topic" paragraph quoted above why it's relevant. And, BTW, this rule makes sense - when it comes to politics, usually both sides have already heard all arguments and if they still remain in disagreement, repetition is unlikely to bring anything but flamewar. 2. See paragraph above. 3. Which in itself might be a good reason, although I'm admittedly stretching it here because I selfishly refuse to take responsibility for other people's emotions and if I found this story interesting, I would have probably upvoted it. I upvoted that one for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14692038 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14692038 because I found TFA informative and there is nothing you can do about it. > Because you dislike the narrative it establishes? Absolutely, it's harmful because words like "hostile", "sexism", "harassment", etc suggest malicious intent which usually just isn't there. It antagonizes men who have no intention of harming women and scares women in situations when no harm was actually meant. It deprives women of ability to effectively complain by making them question whether it makes sense to bring it up with the offender at all. And even when they decide to talk about it, it pre-trains them to paint it as oppression which predictably gets reactions ranging from "WTF" to "we don't give a fuck, your paranoia is your problem".
- KirinDave 9y ago
  The fact that you deliberately want to silence any conversation about how it can be bad is very telling about how you think women should behave in the workplace and respond to abuse. It's also a classic example of an asymmetric definition of discourse. It's only permissible to speak about things that paint you and yours in a positive light. > And even when they decide to talk about it, it pre-trains them to paint it as oppression which predictably gets reactions ranging from "WTF" to "we don't give a fuck, your paranoia is your problem". Just to recap this real fast: 1. You don't believe that men have intent to hurt women, even when they do. 2. You think that dismisses the impact and consequences of the behavior, both legally and morally. You imply that this is so BECAUSE... 3. If women realized the game is rigged towards men that will further undermine them. And pointing out to men that their actions are crass and inappropriate and in some cases illegal just angers them. 4. So ultimately she asked for it by sharing an article about difficulties she's faced in tech. She should have kept her mouth shut and not provoked the men around her. I want to stress this: You're attempting to gaslight people. You're dismissing toxic, abusive, and unprofessional behavior. You even grant that it can be these things, but somehow draw a line between then men and the consequences of their action and label it "intent". If the only thing that discriminates a man's actions between sexism and a joke is HIS internal mental state? Well then, it's sexism. You don't get to avoid the consequences of your actions in a shared setting, words are actions, therefore they can have consequences. For the speaker as well as those spoken to. As an aside... > because I found TFA informative and there is nothing you can do about it. I do not care even slightly about what you upvote. Upvotes are constructive. Flagging is meant to remove spam and obviously useless articles. Your spurious "dime a dozen" complaints don't fool anyone, don't defend your actions, don't conform to the guidelines given. You're misusing flags to sink stories that obviously a good number of people chose to upvote. Maybe stop censoring hacker news because you can't bear the truth.

tptacek 9y ago

You can do that, but if you abuse the flag button like that, your flag button is going to quietly stop working.

qb45 9y ago
Everybody knows it and I wouldn't be bringing attention to myself like that if I used flags often enough to care, I come here in part to read about all sorts of weird stuff people post and flagging is largely counterproductive to that. Plus I doubt that I'm going to have it disabled for merely selective enforcement of the official guidelines.

thewhaaa 9y ago

FYI, some commenters are organizing offsite their “defense” of this post: https://mobile.twitter.com/KirinDave/status/890211366698602496 https://mobile.twitter.com/KirinDave/status/8902113666986024...

sctb 9y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14868934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14868934 and marked it off-topic.

KirinDave 9y ago
Fair enough. Thanks for the note. I was confused.