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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: 0.318s | 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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outime ◴[12 Jul 20 05:25 UTC] No.23809069[source]▶
>Of course I don't want to generalize, but

But you did, and it makes me sad to see the testosterone blaming stuff here.

To be honest, I do remember online communities being much nicer back then (we're talking 14 years ago here) but things have changed a lot. I feel like strong moderation and guidelines work great (see HN where discussions are mostly civilized) instead of blaming half of the world population from an individual observation which can quickly be debunked by visiting any female-only forum or subreddit in 2020 for example.

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baby ◴[12 Jul 20 09:36 UTC] No.23810145[source]▶
Are you saying hormones don’t affect behaviors?
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1. Aachen ◴[12 Jul 20 10:09 UTC] No.23810272[source]▶
I'm not sure that's what they were saying; at least, the second part qualified that first sentence.

It feels like you're changing what they said into something that is obviously false. It isn't so black and white as "do you believe hormones don't affect feelings", so asking that dumbs down the conversation and detracts from the point that testosterone may not be the only thing affecting online conversations.

I guess it's similar to replying to you with the question: "do you believe testosterone is the sole cause for unkind behaviour online?" That just isn't what you meant.