[mtrimpe]

When supporting women's right on Hacker News you tend to get a disproportionate number of downvotes compared to 'normal' topics.

That means that if your comment usually would just not get any upvotes (which yours wouldn't since it wasn't terribly well written) you'll suddenly get into negative point territory on these issues.

If you look you'll be able to find other comments as well which easily pass the 'constructive discussion' criteria of HN comments but are deeply in the gray nonetheless.

[freehunter]

Good god this is so false. I cannot even begin to comprehend that someone would make the statement that anyone supporting women's rights will be automatically downvoted on Hacker News. You can't imagine any other reason the post would be downvoted? How about the statement that you shouldn't say anything you wouldn't want tweeted out of context? How about calling Twitter "tweeter"? Or the implication that this guy had it coming because he should have known better than to try to have a private conversation without it being plastered on the Internet?

There are a number of reasons someone could have downvoted this post, and the first one that jumps to your mind is that a great number of people on HN inherently hate women and don't believe in equal rights. Seriously, I can't even fathom...

[mtrimpe]

If you take a look at my comment history you'll see that I tend to comment on womens rights issues quite frequently, since I'm LGBT myself so their cause is quite close to my heart.

I can tell you from experience that I've seen my votes go up and down 5 or 10 points easily when I comment on topics like these. I've never noticed that for any other comments I make.

[eropple]

I post not infrequently on these issues (this is an aversion for me as this is a case where the female party is unambiguously wrong and behaved in a manner no better and arguably worse than the two guys) and I never see what you claim. So I'm not saying you're wrong, but I am skeptical of it being endemic to the topic.

The post whose downvotes you are ascribing to misogyny can also just be called a poor post. Which, FWIW, I do.

[freehunter]

I could understand your statement if the post in question was a worthwhile contribution to a discussion, was well formatted, and had a reasonable writing style (grammar and spelling). But with as many flaws as the post had, attributing the downvotes purely to an apparently large population of misogynists on HN seems to be a strawman designed to further the already controversial discussion at hand.

[mtrimpe]

He seemed genuinely confused as to why he received these downvotes and I just tried to inform him that, apart from his comment not being particularly good, he was probably also the victim of excessive downvoting due to the polarizing nature of the topic.

[cobrausn]

Your first statement is an unprovable assertion. He might get an equal number of upvotes from Adriana-supporting hardliners, but perhaps they are just outnumbered.

You are trying to frame this conversation in terms of 'you support women in tech if you make apologist comments for Adriana, you are a hardliner if you think she overreacted and should be brought to account'. It's a bit of a false dichotomy.

I think this is a particularly polarizing event that is causing a lot more downvoting than normally happens on HN.

[mtrimpe]

I've adjusted my first statement to be more neutral.

As for your last sentence, I can tell from experience that threads on womens rights topics tend to be more polarized in general and cause a lot more downvoting in general which is exactly the point I was trying to make initially.

[laichzeit0]

"When supporting women's right on Hacker News you tend to get a disproportionate number of downvotes compared to 'normal' topics."

Slightly off topic, but if that is the case, then so what? I'm pretty sure it could be scripted (go through all HN topics, check downvotes etc. you could make this reasonably scientific). The point is still, should we even care? Why must we feel like there is a need to shape this fact or alter it according to some PC dogma? Let's be tolerant and leave the community to downvote/upvote as it wants. If it reaches a critical mass then those taking offense will find a way of reacting appropriately (downvoting anti-feminist posts, stop posting on HN, etc.) If HN posters are for the majority anti-feminist, then it is. There will be some people that take offense to this, other's not. The assumption that we can't offend or be offended needs to be questioned.

[pfortuny]

Thanks for the pointer and for the details. Yes, when in a rush my English gets really awful.