[ObviousScience]

Your comment suggests a strong confounding factor: feminist communities are likely to be both smaller and more focused on user conduct than technical communities at large.

Without controlling for these factors, attaching the behaviors you do to "feminism" is nothing but saying "good things are done by those who agree with me, and bad things are done by those /others/".

Your argument does nothing to explain why you think this happens, and simply admits you're appropriating them without knowing why the correlation exists in communities.

Classic propaganda.

Ed:

I'm glad I've been downvoted and apologized for because I raised a methodological issue with trying to ascribe behaviors to a community, instead of actually showing me where she discussed why she doesn't think it's either of the (relatively well known) effects I asked about. I couldn't find anywhere she addressed this topic, but I'm entirely open to being corrected.

Here's the wikipedia article on the fallacy I'm claiming is being committed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_caus...

Ed 2:

My latin is terrible these days, lol

[hashbanged]

> feminist communities are likely to be both smaller and more focused on user conduct than technical communities at large

Is Python small? I'm sure there were other small linux communities (the term seems almost redundant) who were much less welcoming to women.

I don't know what to say to convince you that open source communities are traditionally hyper male and sexist. It's not so hard to imagine that you might get more contributions from women in an explicitly women friendly space within a larger women unfriendly (to say the least) community.

Here's some reading, I encourage you to read it if you think I'm wrong.

http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4291/33...

[ObviousScience]

> Also, these communities’ openness means that a minority of difficult members (including, for example, a sincere misogynist or an insincere troll) can disproportionately affect the tone and dynamics of interactions. Finally, the ideology and rhetoric of freedom and openness can then be used to (a) suppress concerns by labeling them as “censorship” and, to (b) rationalize low female participation as simply a matter of women’s choice.

> I argue that some otherwise commendable features of the free culture movement also contribute to the gender gap. That is, the geek stereotype and discursive style can be unappealing, open communities are especially susceptible to difficult people, and the ideas of freedom and openness can be used to dismiss concerns and rationalize the gender gap as a matter of preference and choice.

I'm making a second reply purely to point out that the article you cited talked about confounding influences as being one of the main sources of the problem, while you attacked my comment for talking about confounding influences being part of the solution.

That seems absolutely insane, and suggests you didn't actually respond to my comment on the merits, but rather, out of anger someone didn't agree with you.

[ObviousScience]

> It's not so hard to imagine that you might get more contributions from women in an explicitly women friendly space within a larger women unfriendly (to say the least) community.

No one (at least, not me) was talking about this.

What I said is that ascribing certain common behaviors to being a result of being feminist or being part of a feminist community without examining other causes is such a common fallacy is has a Latin name and wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_caus...

It's also a classic propaganda maneuver.

Ed:

Been too long since school, can't Latin on the fly.

[chipsy]

OP provided evidence from personal experience: "In these communities, I observed this." You speculated about both qualities of feminist communities and qualities of user group size and composition, and then used that to drive the premise of your argument. That is unsound criticism.

[ObviousScience]

Hardly.

That in a community you experience something doesn't necessarily imply that it's related to the core ideology of the group being different - there often are other factors which cause the change and would independent of that core ideology. "With this, therefore because of this" is such a common fallacy, it has a name in Latin: cum hoc ergo propter hoc. [1]

Further, my experience with online communities, which dates over a decade - and the experiences of my friends managing both large and small internet communities - implies that there are two correlations: a larger group will tend to have more problematic actors, who tend to be overrepresented in the number of comments, and that a group which focuses more on the behavior of members will tend to have better behaving members (if only because they ban the others).

Without controlling for two well known internet community effects, arguing that your community is somehow special is the height of improper reasoning.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_caus...

Ed: Terrible Latin.

[richmarr]

> my experience with online communities, > which dates over a decade

Translation: "I am over twenty"

Seriously though, I love logic too, but it doesn't always make you right. Sometimes it makes you that guy that stops everyone making progress. I've been that guy before, and I've fired that guy before.

[ObviousScience]

Translation: I don't approach very serious questions with the best tools to come to the correct answer, I just go with whatever feels good to me so I can be seen Doing Something!(tm) even if it ends up not helping, and I'll punish or censor anyone who disagrees with me!

Seriously, I don't understand this view when taken in response to serious topics: aren't sexism and the challenges women face in technology topics serious enough that they deserve us at our best, not us at our most base and animalistic? aren't serious topics the ones we should most realize we're emotional beings and strive to approach with rationality, knowing that they're complex and full of correlations caused by confounding variables, which are known to be deceptive to our instincts and intuitions? aren't serious topics the ones we should realize our own propensity to shout down dissent for less-than-good reasons, and instead strive to discuss as mature individuals our different experiences and views with each other?

Social topics are large, complex, and full of all kinds of confounding variables that make sussing out the true cause of things a complex task. That you think now is the time we should abandon the tools we invented just to do that - like questioning if a correlation is actually causal or not - is just kind of weird to me.

I'm open to being wrong, but so far, no one has taken the time to point out what they think I'm wrong about here (it would have just been a quick cite if she'd address that point!), and instead have attacked me personally for asking a methodological question about a sensitive topic.

So I'll be blunt: I don't think you actually care about women, sexism, or making things better. I think you just want to feel good about it, about Doing Something!(tm), rather than having to deal with the real work of sorting out a complex social issue.

That's all I hear from you when you say "Let's not be logical here, let's just go with what I feel is right", that you don't care enough about the topic to even be concerned if you're right or not.

[richmarr]

The only logical approach is to demand rigor in situations that demand it. For me this is not one of those situations, because the cost (to me) of the OP being mistaken in her conclusions or actions is zero, as it should be to you. So we logically we should support her because if she's right we all benefit.

For some reason something about the OP's position has made you angry and defensive, as demonstrated by the lengthy replies you've made to a number of people, in my case containing some quite personal comments. Up to you, but I'd suggest taking some time to explore why that is.

[ObviousScience]

I'm actually very supportive of the effort to make safe spaces for women in tech.

Rather, I'm unhappy the OP is going out of her way - to the point of making a separate post about it - trying to appropriate values common to other world views as being inherently feminist. I don't think that's empirically true, and I think that's pretty clear from the fact no one factually corrected me and attacked me for asking about it.

Rather, her comment classic "othering" of people you disagree with, and is not how we should conduct ourselves on sensitive topics such as sexism.

[LyndsySimon]

I believe your original post might have been taken differently had you omitted the last line:

> Classic propaganda

[ObviousScience]

I stand by that comment in light of the fact no one factually corrected me, and attacked me personally in a fit of irrationality, going so far as to cite a study that agreed with me it was confounding factors that largely influenced these kind of community behaviors as if it was correcting me.

I think this shows that people's support of the claim is not because feminist communities actually cause that (or rather, that it hasn't been shown in any clear fashion), but because they want to adhere to the ideology and claim successes for it, even when those successes may be caused by other factors.

Propaganda intended to other people who aren't in their party, start to finish. And I think we should expect better of people than that, when talking about serious and sensitive topics.

[knowtheory]

This is only true if OP's arguments have no content and their qualities are attributed solely to a particular group.

Given that OP's argument does have content that we can evaluate your argument is irrelevant.

So that propaganda thing is just jumping to conclusions.