[capstone]

There are exactly zero occurrences of the words "women" or "female" in the article. The only reference to gender at all is a brief and completely inconsequential mention of the fact that your typical Postgres hacker is, among other things, male.

Yet somehow you end up debating the veracity of, "Since there are so few women contributing to Postgres, it's obvious that it's not a meritocracy", a statement neither made verbatim nor in any way implied by the actual article.

Isn't it just a little crazy? Can a writer mention a simple fact without it becoming all about battle of the sexes?

[aplusbi]

I don't believe that drblast was trying to make this about a battle of the sexes but was just using gender as an easily identifiable example.

The article states that Postgres isn't a meritocracy because the hackers aren't from diverse backgrounds. drblast was attempting to show how this is a logical fallacy - meritocracies aren't ipso facto diverse.

[capstone]

I think it's rather impractical to attempt to guess a stranger's intent. Drblast responded to the article by quoting a hypothetical statement of his own ("if I were to say X") and then quoting a supposed statement from the article ("but apparently it's ok to say Y"). You can interpret that 10 different ways but why? Isn't it simpler to point out that the article never made statement Y in the first place?

Incidentally, I find the point you make - meritocracies aren't ipso facto diverse - worthy of debate. However I don't believe it's the same point as the parent.

[drblast]

The article said that the project was "dominated" by people who are "male," among other things.

The logical error here is the point, not the specific characteristic of whatever group the author is concerned about. The point would be the same whether I had used her "male" example or her "affluent" example. She's making the same error in both cases.