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PG: The biggest source of stress for me at YC was running HN

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482 points ilamont | 1 comments | 11 Jul 20 21:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.39s | source
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sgustard ◴[12 Jul 20 04:01 UTC] No.23808698[source]▶
I started an internet forum in 2006 whose audience was almost entirely female. It grew to a reasonable size, not huge, but what was remarkable was a nearly complete lack of trolls, arguments, and bad behavior. We saw that women just engage differently online, with a premium on expressing positive sentiments and encouraging each other to contribute constructively. Of course I don't want to generalize, but the removal of young men at their testosterone peak age from anonymous forums is remarkable.
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1. JohnBooty ◴[12 Jul 20 09:09 UTC] No.23810025[source]▶
This echoes my experience. My site (of which the forum was the most active part) was most active circa 2003-2012 FWIW.

Our male:female ratio was 2:1.

(Which was honestly really high for those days, particularly the early 2000's)

Our ratio of problems with male users to female users was probably more like 20:1.

Overall it was a positive community. There were memorable exceptions involving problems with female members, both online and offline, but they were notable partly for being such anomalies.

Additionally, many female members expressed to me that the "sparring" nature of the forums tended to be a real turnoff. They preferred to use the other features of the site.