After two days, a discussion will die down to the point where it barely gets any responses. If you’re going to make it ladies only, make it ladies only permanently. Make an identical male only counterpart. That would solve the problem “Where will the men post?” and give you a nice undiluted control for your observations about the women. It will also help keep things organized (Otherwise can you imagine the overhead in going through the thread trying to figure out who was male and who was female, and reading each time stamp to determine who was who? It’s much much easier to make two threads.) If women know that men will reply to their comments later, this may inhibit them from saying certain things the same way that it will inhibit them if men are there right away. If they know the men are never supposed to reply to that comment, that would help maximize the women’s comfort.
Counterpoint: I don’t think gender segregation of posts will break down any communication barriers; if anything it will cause divisiveness as in an ‘us-versus-them’ mentality.
If two days is too long (and it probably is), then let’s make it one day, or 12 hours, or 6 hours, or whatever value will work best. I didn’t want to make “separate but equal” thread, but to use the time bonus for ladies as a way to approximate how LW would look like if we had more balanced gender ratio. (An artificial tool to amplify the “women’s voice”.) So the best value would be the one which on average results in equal number of comments by men and women when the discussion is over.
And I am not interested which specific comments are written by whom. (So I would ignore the timestamps while reading. Also, women are allowed to write later, too.) I just want to know how the whole discussion would feel like if it was gender-balanced.
If women know that men will reply to their comments later, this may inhibit them from saying certain things the same way that it will inhibit them if men are there right away.
Then those women would probably be also inhibited from saying those things in a gender-balanced environment.
If they know the men are never supposed to reply to that comment, that would help maximize the women’s comfort.
I would prefer an environment where everyone is as comfortable as possible, not an environment optimized for one gender’s comfort only. (More technically, a cooperate/cooperate solution, not male-cooperate/female-defect solution.)
Reducing the amount of time the women have to comment may mean that no women comment at all. Considering that only a little over a third of the posts on page two of discussions have enough comments to (statistically speaking) contain at least one comment from two different women (the post would need to have 20 comments, as LW is about 10% female), if you don’t absolutely maximize the number of comments from women in your experiment post, you’re likely to see no discussions between females. It would probably have the best chance of working if you asked the women to agree to comment on the thread before hand. If you ask, also, for male volunteers, you’ll then be able to control the male to female ratio by asking non-volunteers not to respond at all because it is an experimental thread.
Also, what conversational differences will you look for and how will you know that you found them?
Reducing the amount of time the women have to comment may mean that no women comment at all.
I emphasised a word in my original proposal, just to avoid a possible misunderstanding. Women would have all the time to comment. Only the first day or two it would be exclusive time, and later the discussion would be open to everyone.
I agree that if we already don’t have enough women here, they may be unable to make a longer-than-epsilon discussion. But I feel bad about asking someone specifically to comment on a post. I know I probably wouldn’t like to be asked to comment on a topic which may not interest me naturally, just because I happen to have some trait.
what conversational differences will you look for and how will you know that you found them?
A lack (or just less) of whatever women complain about in articles like this. Whether the complaints are about form or content. During the protected time period those things should not happen at all. (Unless some complaining women are wrong about the cause of their complaint. We could possibly find out that e.g. rationalist women do also naturally produce “less warm” discussions than is usual for women discussing outside LW.) And later, the discussion should already be primed. (I know it does not stop anyone from introducing e.g. the topic of PUA. But even if that happens, the discussion will already have a lot of threads without this topic, so this topic is unlikely to become dominant in the discussion.)
After two days, a discussion will die down to the point where it barely gets any responses. If you’re going to make it ladies only, make it ladies only permanently. Make an identical male only counterpart. That would solve the problem “Where will the men post?” and give you a nice undiluted control for your observations about the women. It will also help keep things organized (Otherwise can you imagine the overhead in going through the thread trying to figure out who was male and who was female, and reading each time stamp to determine who was who? It’s much much easier to make two threads.) If women know that men will reply to their comments later, this may inhibit them from saying certain things the same way that it will inhibit them if men are there right away. If they know the men are never supposed to reply to that comment, that would help maximize the women’s comfort.
Counterpoint: I don’t think gender segregation of posts will break down any communication barriers; if anything it will cause divisiveness as in an ‘us-versus-them’ mentality.
That would be a hypothesis for which we’d have to complete an experiment.
If two days is too long (and it probably is), then let’s make it one day, or 12 hours, or 6 hours, or whatever value will work best. I didn’t want to make “separate but equal” thread, but to use the time bonus for ladies as a way to approximate how LW would look like if we had more balanced gender ratio. (An artificial tool to amplify the “women’s voice”.) So the best value would be the one which on average results in equal number of comments by men and women when the discussion is over.
And I am not interested which specific comments are written by whom. (So I would ignore the timestamps while reading. Also, women are allowed to write later, too.) I just want to know how the whole discussion would feel like if it was gender-balanced.
Then those women would probably be also inhibited from saying those things in a gender-balanced environment.
I would prefer an environment where everyone is as comfortable as possible, not an environment optimized for one gender’s comfort only. (More technically, a cooperate/cooperate solution, not male-cooperate/female-defect solution.)
Reducing the amount of time the women have to comment may mean that no women comment at all. Considering that only a little over a third of the posts on page two of discussions have enough comments to (statistically speaking) contain at least one comment from two different women (the post would need to have 20 comments, as LW is about 10% female), if you don’t absolutely maximize the number of comments from women in your experiment post, you’re likely to see no discussions between females. It would probably have the best chance of working if you asked the women to agree to comment on the thread before hand. If you ask, also, for male volunteers, you’ll then be able to control the male to female ratio by asking non-volunteers not to respond at all because it is an experimental thread.
Also, what conversational differences will you look for and how will you know that you found them?
I emphasised a word in my original proposal, just to avoid a possible misunderstanding. Women would have all the time to comment. Only the first day or two it would be exclusive time, and later the discussion would be open to everyone.
I agree that if we already don’t have enough women here, they may be unable to make a longer-than-epsilon discussion. But I feel bad about asking someone specifically to comment on a post. I know I probably wouldn’t like to be asked to comment on a topic which may not interest me naturally, just because I happen to have some trait.
A lack (or just less) of whatever women complain about in articles like this. Whether the complaints are about form or content. During the protected time period those things should not happen at all. (Unless some complaining women are wrong about the cause of their complaint. We could possibly find out that e.g. rationalist women do also naturally produce “less warm” discussions than is usual for women discussing outside LW.) And later, the discussion should already be primed. (I know it does not stop anyone from introducing e.g. the topic of PUA. But even if that happens, the discussion will already have a lot of threads without this topic, so this topic is unlikely to become dominant in the discussion.)