As an immediately obvious example, the grandparent, my comment answering Eliezer’s question about which privileges I thought relevant, is at 0 and has been negative. Julian Morrison’s reply, which does just about exactly the same thing, is at 2 points. Not that his comment was not helpful and doesn’t deserve two points, but it seems roughly similar to its parent in content. This could be personal, instead of related to my gender, or I might have actually put something badly whereas his very concise comment avoided such issues—or it could be #6. I have no way of knowing.
At least 20% of the “Top Contributors” are female, which is far higher than expected given LW demographics. How does that fit with point 6?
AnnaSalamon is still there, but she has not posted anything in two months and it’s not obvious that she’ll be back in the forseeable future. She’s slipping down the list, and unless she returns to regular activity and gets new karma, I will be the only female there after a while.
Also, mere overwhelming male prevalence on the site is a form of privilege in itself.
Edit: After my third instance of suspiciously rapid karma drop, I’m no longer one of the top ten highest-karma’ed posters—as soon as the list refreshes I will be off it unless I get upvoted enough before then. I guess that solves the representative demographics problem.
Well, I voted you up. Your post seems to have been downvoted for pure disagreement. I voted to correct that.
Mine was just additive with no substantive argument, so it got props for info without drawing partisan fire. I think. I doubt it’s that you’re female—it’s that you were the enemy. Very bad rationalist behavior, but I’m not sure it’s sexist.
The “evidence” you’ve given to support 6 is extremely weak. I’m not saying that such bias does not exist—I absolutely do not know—but your response doesn’t convince me in the slightest.
It is obvious that some people with very strong feelings (or who are especially angry, etc.) might be voting you anomalously at the moment. I think the drive-by voting that seems to go on here for many different reasons is deplorable, but your single anecdote is not evidence of a pervasive long-standing trend.
And the fact that AnnaSalamon is not active at the moment but is still on the leader board is irrelevant to my point that there are currently more women on the board than expected, not fewer, which would be the case if your point held.
How could there be fewer women on the list than expected? We are 3% of the LW population according to Yvain’s survey—even if we’re underreported and are really twice that, it wouldn’t be statistically odd for there to be no women on the top list.
Also, I don’t doubt that the recent odd voting is because of the storm I’ve stirred up here—but it happened twice before I’d even considered putting up this post. It’s happened to other people too.
There could be fewer if there were 0 out of 10 for a long period of time. Which is not what we observe.
Likewise, if we extended the list to 100 top contributors, we would expect there to be no more women added to the leader board and for it to remain just you and AnnaSalamon on the list. Do you expect that would happen? And if not, how is it compatible with women’s contributions being voted up significantly less than men’s?
I actually perceive this kind of comments as haggling, a form of noise that annoys me and that I expect has at least as strong negative effect on some people as the topic of this post has on you, probably stronger.
Why do you think that applies here?
At least 20% of the “Top Contributors” are female, which is far higher than expected given LW demographics. How does that fit with point 6?
As an immediately obvious example, the grandparent, my comment answering Eliezer’s question about which privileges I thought relevant, is at 0 and has been negative. Julian Morrison’s reply, which does just about exactly the same thing, is at 2 points. Not that his comment was not helpful and doesn’t deserve two points, but it seems roughly similar to its parent in content. This could be personal, instead of related to my gender, or I might have actually put something badly whereas his very concise comment avoided such issues—or it could be #6. I have no way of knowing.
AnnaSalamon is still there, but she has not posted anything in two months and it’s not obvious that she’ll be back in the forseeable future. She’s slipping down the list, and unless she returns to regular activity and gets new karma, I will be the only female there after a while.
Also, mere overwhelming male prevalence on the site is a form of privilege in itself.
Edit: After my third instance of suspiciously rapid karma drop, I’m no longer one of the top ten highest-karma’ed posters—as soon as the list refreshes I will be off it unless I get upvoted enough before then. I guess that solves the representative demographics problem.
Edit 2: Now it’s back...
Well, I voted you up. Your post seems to have been downvoted for pure disagreement. I voted to correct that.
Mine was just additive with no substantive argument, so it got props for info without drawing partisan fire. I think. I doubt it’s that you’re female—it’s that you were the enemy. Very bad rationalist behavior, but I’m not sure it’s sexist.
The “evidence” you’ve given to support 6 is extremely weak. I’m not saying that such bias does not exist—I absolutely do not know—but your response doesn’t convince me in the slightest.
It is obvious that some people with very strong feelings (or who are especially angry, etc.) might be voting you anomalously at the moment. I think the drive-by voting that seems to go on here for many different reasons is deplorable, but your single anecdote is not evidence of a pervasive long-standing trend.
And the fact that AnnaSalamon is not active at the moment but is still on the leader board is irrelevant to my point that there are currently more women on the board than expected, not fewer, which would be the case if your point held.
How could there be fewer women on the list than expected? We are 3% of the LW population according to Yvain’s survey—even if we’re underreported and are really twice that, it wouldn’t be statistically odd for there to be no women on the top list.
Also, I don’t doubt that the recent odd voting is because of the storm I’ve stirred up here—but it happened twice before I’d even considered putting up this post. It’s happened to other people too.
There could be fewer if there were 0 out of 10 for a long period of time. Which is not what we observe.
Likewise, if we extended the list to 100 top contributors, we would expect there to be no more women added to the leader board and for it to remain just you and AnnaSalamon on the list. Do you expect that would happen? And if not, how is it compatible with women’s contributions being voted up significantly less than men’s?
It has happened (and continues to happen) to a lot of other people and doesn’t seem to be related to gender, which was my point.
I actually perceive this kind of comments as haggling, a form of noise that annoys me and that I expect has at least as strong negative effect on some people as the topic of this post has on you, probably stronger.
I’m sorry you don’t approve. I wouldn’t have mentioned it, but I was asked a question.