[Mz]

Although, I do think it's borderline inarguable that you are reading too much into the personality traits of the Slack channel members (e.g., "hateful") with far too little information to justify the strength of the words.

That is a misinterpretation of my remark. I have personally seen this firsthand over and over. My general remark that I am sick of seeing it does not attribute hatefulness per se to the discussion members. I still seriously doubt that it was a very warm fuzzy conversation. I think the author of the piece is being incredibly charitable.

Just look at how I am being attacked here to give you some inkling of how such conversations typically go. It is hard enough to get privileged white males to be genuinely respectful to each other in an internet conversation. That used to be kind of a given on HN, which deteriorated over time. I hope to see that sort of atmosphere return here -- it does seem to be improving -- but I hope it also includes the women in a way they never were before.

[Paul-ish]

Talking about what was said in the slack channel would distract readers from the main point he was trying to make in the post. If anything he should have said less, as it is clear some still want to discuss the slack channel more than his main point.

[Mz]

I do a lot of blogging. I also get paid to do freelance work, often for business sites, where I get explicit instruction to say nothing negative. This is sometimes an incredibly challenging thing to do.

There was no gun to his head to comment on this discussion at all. He was under zero obligation to describe it as a slack channel or even an online discussion. He was under zero obligation to give what description of it he did. He could have easily said something incredibly generic about "Discussions I have been fortunate to be privy to suggest...."

The fact that he had to spend an entire paragraph not talking about the contents of the discussion and trying ever so hard to be PC while the pain of that discussion clearly bled through in his framing of his comments speaks to how not well it actually went. It is entirely possible to just say nothing about things you wish to say nothing about. I do that pretty often.