My guess is that I fall right alongside you in terms of the valence of my opinions about diversity, "meritocracy", and the working culture of the San Francisco Bay Area. I'd even hazard a guess that my level of militancy on those topics is similar to yours.
I am a reliable flagger of diversity stories that I perceive as inviting flame wars --- even though I'm also a willing participant in those flamewars, as you can quickly find out from the search bar below.
What I'd like more people to consider is that HN can't be all things to all people. I find the site personally interesting, have met several friends here, and have extracted considerable professional value from it. Those are all very important things to me.
Meanwhile: there's a whole big wide Internet out there that can host discussions and debates on social issues of all stripes. If those debates, hosted here, are going to rip the site up (and evidence suggests they will): not worth it.
There are people whose opinions I respect a great deal --- Maciej Ceglowski being a good example --- who strongly disagree with me on this point. Of course I might not be right about this. I'd just say, be careful about assuming that the bias is in favor of a status quo on the substantive issues. For a lot of us, this is a process issue.
I am a reliable flagger of diversity stories that I perceive as inviting flame wars --- even though I'm also a willing participant in those flamewars, as you can quickly find out from the search bar below.
What I'd like more people to consider is that HN can't be all things to all people. I find the site personally interesting, have met several friends here, and have extracted considerable professional value from it. Those are all very important things to me.
Meanwhile: there's a whole big wide Internet out there that can host discussions and debates on social issues of all stripes. If those debates, hosted here, are going to rip the site up (and evidence suggests they will): not worth it.
There are people whose opinions I respect a great deal --- Maciej Ceglowski being a good example --- who strongly disagree with me on this point. Of course I might not be right about this. I'd just say, be careful about assuming that the bias is in favor of a status quo on the substantive issues. For a lot of us, this is a process issue.