Consider what the word “majority” means and how that impacts the balance of such discussions. Especially on a platform where people vote on each other’s comments.
In the Linux forum example, the occasional “as a Windows user…” comment isn’t a problem, but it does become one when it makes up 80-90% of comments / visitors. Try to understand how this shapes a community when the relatively few directly affected people (for whom the community was created in the first place) are annoyed by this and stop contributing.
This is why you need both kinds of spaces, and why it’s silly and short-sighted to get mad over this policy.
The person you are replying to never mentioned their stance on the rule in question, only the analogies used by the original commenter… Which are terrible analogies both for skisnow’s reasoning, and your comment as well.
They are not the same thing, because of the power dynamics at play, and I think most people in either a linux forum or PC gaming forum would react negatively if the mods banned people for one comment made while not being the “target demographic”.
Also, someone can use both linux and windows. Someone can play PC games and console. They might have valuable insight having experiences from both.
That doesn’t really apply to a women’s only community. (although I am curious what WomensStuff’s stance on Trans people is - I don’t know of the community that much to be honest).
vegan communities might be a closer example. A community of people vastly outnumbered by carnivores that have strong feelings about vegans. Generally when a vegan post gets popular, the comments become a bit of a shit fest due to the influx of people with less positive views of veganism. /r/SeattleWA had a similar issue and without effective moderation, turned into a place for non-Seattlites to complain about Seattle.
AFAIK WomensStuff is open to trans women and nonbinary folks - pretty much anyone who identifies with womanhood on some level and can speak on it based on their own personal experience.
as a nonbinary person with lived experience across the gender spectrum I feel at home both in WomensStuff as well as MensLib type communities, so the “windows + linux” example definitely applies in these spaces too.
Maybe we are missing some context. Did a target demographics’ contributions get drowned out by others in this or a similar community? Or are you only worried it could happen based on the demographics of the platform?
Yes that is absolutely the norm in such communities. It was the same for subreddits that went default.
Obviously you can’t trace every single up-/downvote and comment to a certain gender, but it’s very apparent from the content of comments and the general tone. That’s the whole issue.
Consider what the word “majority” means and how that impacts the balance of such discussions. Especially on a platform where people vote on each other’s comments.
In the Linux forum example, the occasional “as a Windows user…” comment isn’t a problem, but it does become one when it makes up 80-90% of comments / visitors. Try to understand how this shapes a community when the relatively few directly affected people (for whom the community was created in the first place) are annoyed by this and stop contributing.
This is why you need both kinds of spaces, and why it’s silly and short-sighted to get mad over this policy.
The person you are replying to never mentioned their stance on the rule in question, only the analogies used by the original commenter… Which are terrible analogies both for skisnow’s reasoning, and your comment as well.
They are not the same thing, because of the power dynamics at play, and I think most people in either a linux forum or PC gaming forum would react negatively if the mods banned people for one comment made while not being the “target demographic”.
Also, someone can use both linux and windows. Someone can play PC games and console. They might have valuable insight having experiences from both.
That doesn’t really apply to a women’s only community. (although I am curious what WomensStuff’s stance on Trans people is - I don’t know of the community that much to be honest).
“My favorite linux distro is WSL”
vegan communities might be a closer example. A community of people vastly outnumbered by carnivores that have strong feelings about vegans. Generally when a vegan post gets popular, the comments become a bit of a shit fest due to the influx of people with less positive views of veganism. /r/SeattleWA had a similar issue and without effective moderation, turned into a place for non-Seattlites to complain about Seattle.
AFAIK WomensStuff is open to trans women and nonbinary folks - pretty much anyone who identifies with womanhood on some level and can speak on it based on their own personal experience.
as a nonbinary person with lived experience across the gender spectrum I feel at home both in WomensStuff as well as MensLib type communities, so the “windows + linux” example definitely applies in these spaces too.
Maybe we are missing some context. Did a target demographics’ contributions get drowned out by others in this or a similar community? Or are you only worried it could happen based on the demographics of the platform?
Yes that is absolutely the norm in such communities. It was the same for subreddits that went default.
Obviously you can’t trace every single up-/downvote and comment to a certain gender, but it’s very apparent from the content of comments and the general tone. That’s the whole issue.