You have repeatedly made this assertion, but you have made no effort to substantiate it.
(I am not the person you are replying to, but) I have actually offered myself as an example in this discussion, which has been repeatedly pissed on. I am the top ranked woman on HN, in spite of never having had a tech job. When I still had relatively little karma, I was noticing that men on the leaderboard were closing ranks and things were getting what felt kind of ugly on my end. I was getting remarks that suggested to me that I was "prominent" for a woman here. I gathered data to verify that and soon concluded that I was rather high ranking for a woman, in spite of my low score.
I have worked really hard to move certain people out of my way without turning it into a fight and to participate in good faith and so on. I am noticing in recent months that other women are benefitting from the changes here, which weren't simply wrought by me, it is far more complicated than that.
Of course, I have known lots of people in life who will simply dismiss whatever I have accomplished with some convenient explanation like "survivor bias" or "that's just your opinion" or even "It is wild coincidence, stranger things have happened." People seem to basically believe what they already believe. Confirmation bias seems to make most people interpret all events through the lens of their current mental models and getting people to consider others is quite hard.
I did not originally set out to become anyone of influence on Hacker News, but after discovering that I had fairly high rank for a woman in spite of zero ambition, I decided to run with it. And I went from something silly like 4k karma to currently above 19k karma in probably a shorter time than it took me to get that original 4k. Furthermore, I no longer see men on the leaderboard routinely closing ranks to exclude me and things like that. The atmosphere has changed and without a battle.
I am expecting this comment of mine to also be torn apart and pissed on, which is par for the course for this type of comment. Nonetheless, I am leaving it "for the record" in hopes that it causes some people to think, even though it is highly unlikely to change your mind at all.
Nonetheless, I think you're making a bit of a generalization here from messageboard karma to the real world.
The community here on HN is self selected for a particular kind of person, and the people that would be on my side in this discussion really tend to avoid this board for similar reasons.
I have no doubt that you'll get more karma for being cordial instead of abrasive, respectable instead of radical. But I care very little about how much karma I have.
Eh, karma is far easier to point to than the things I actually pay the most attention to. I also cannot fathom why people make this sort of distinction between cyberspace and meatspace. People get jobs and work and meet future spouses and on and on via online forums. There are an awful lot of real world movers and shakers right here on Hacker News.
>I also cannot fathom why people make this sort of distinction between cyberspace and meatspace.
I don't, in general, I just meant that randos online are not the target of my activism, and I'm not currently trying to conduct myself in such a way that they become allies. That's all.
(I am not the person you are replying to, but) I have actually offered myself as an example in this discussion, which has been repeatedly pissed on. I am the top ranked woman on HN, in spite of never having had a tech job. When I still had relatively little karma, I was noticing that men on the leaderboard were closing ranks and things were getting what felt kind of ugly on my end. I was getting remarks that suggested to me that I was "prominent" for a woman here. I gathered data to verify that and soon concluded that I was rather high ranking for a woman, in spite of my low score.
I have worked really hard to move certain people out of my way without turning it into a fight and to participate in good faith and so on. I am noticing in recent months that other women are benefitting from the changes here, which weren't simply wrought by me, it is far more complicated than that.
Of course, I have known lots of people in life who will simply dismiss whatever I have accomplished with some convenient explanation like "survivor bias" or "that's just your opinion" or even "It is wild coincidence, stranger things have happened." People seem to basically believe what they already believe. Confirmation bias seems to make most people interpret all events through the lens of their current mental models and getting people to consider others is quite hard.
I did not originally set out to become anyone of influence on Hacker News, but after discovering that I had fairly high rank for a woman in spite of zero ambition, I decided to run with it. And I went from something silly like 4k karma to currently above 19k karma in probably a shorter time than it took me to get that original 4k. Furthermore, I no longer see men on the leaderboard routinely closing ranks to exclude me and things like that. The atmosphere has changed and without a battle.
I am expecting this comment of mine to also be torn apart and pissed on, which is par for the course for this type of comment. Nonetheless, I am leaving it "for the record" in hopes that it causes some people to think, even though it is highly unlikely to change your mind at all.