
Women in Tech: How Anonymity Contributes to the Problem - randomwalker
http://33bits.org/2010/08/30/women-in-tech-how-anonymity-contributes-to-the-problem/
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naner
You are conflating anonymity with accountability. Accountability can be
improved without revealing someone's identity and revealing someone's identity
will not necessarily improve their behavior. (There is plenty of bad behavior
on Facebook, for example.)

Your (and Schmit's and Zuckerberg's) solution to this social problem will have
more negative unintended consequences then I think we realize.

See the following for better reasoning and analysis than I can offer:

[http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securityma...](http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2006/01/70000)

[http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/06/12/for-
the...](http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/06/12/for-the-
lolz-4chan-is-hacking-the-attention-economy.html)

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mechanical_fish
It's darkly amusing how people pretend this is about anonymity. As if there
had never been a sexist jerk who had a name.

The first-order answer - the word that belongs in this headline - is
moderation; reputation and identity are just tools to make the moderation
slightly easier. But people try to avoid facing up to this. Moderation is a
tedious task that we all really wish could be done by a machine. It can't.

~~~
randomwalker
You're getting all wound up over nothing :) I write a blog about anonymity, so
I'm pointing out that anonymity is part of the problem here.

Your point that moderation is the larger goal and reputation/identity is only
a tool is certainly valid. I guess we disagree about how effective a tool it
is. For a visceral, deeply depressing account of how different the same
person's behavior can be depending on whether or not they're anonymous, check
out the story of the harassment of two female Yale Law students on AutoAdmit:
[http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-
news/portfoli...](http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-
news/portfolio/2009/02/11/Two-Lawyers-Fight-Cyber-Bullying/)

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araneae
If there weren't anonymous comments, then we wouldn't know that some men in
tech are in fact prejudiced against women in tech.

That said, I'm officially sick of this back-and-forth. It crops up every few
months on the blogosphere, and we never get anywhere. It's _both_ , guys. It's
both. It may be relevant how much of it is one thing and how much of it is the
other, but until you can walk up to me with a nice cold glass of data and tell
me it's 23% biological and 23% prejudice and the other 54% is due to solar
flares you're not going to convince me of anything at all.

Truce?

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eleventyone
I thought this blog would be about how women being anonymous / not presenting
as female (in order to avoid prejudice against them) means that it appears
there are fewer women in the tech community then there actually are.

For the record I'm female.

~~~
symkat
I had the same thought, specifically women who work in FOSS communities
anonymously and do independent consulting not being counted as much as those
at random tech firms.

~~~
jff
I don't know, at least in a FOSS community, revealing yourself as a woman
seems like a good way to get plenty of help, swift replies, and votes for
positions of power. I've seen it before ("Jill for list moderator! She's the
greatest!"), but of course that's also a good reason for a woman to remain
anonymous--not everybody is cut out for the fawning adoration of 15-year-old
GNOME coders.

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VladRussian
How it is always about the [presumably hostile] environment? how about a bit
of personal responsibility? For example, if i try to practice law or medicine
i'd also find myself in a hostile environment... Yep, i don't have a license.

