Live data from Hacker News

Leap: An Online Community for Women

blog.ycombinator.com

21–30 of 364 posts

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#21
seems wonderful! just requested a membership :)

I've been part of some online tech communities for women, but I found they were too US-centric and it was difficult for me to obtain value from it, hoping Leap will be different

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#23
post #2

Hi! I'm the creator of Leap. Glad to answer questions here.

I'll go straight to the difficult questions:

1. I thought gender-based discrimination was illegal. How is Leap not illegal?

2. One of the main objections of "gentleman's clubs" was that their (male) members had access to important networking contacts, putting women in unequal foot in an unfair way when it came to businesses. Wouldn't Leap be unfair in the same way?

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#24
I am a bit triggered.

This segregation stuff does not make sense to me, it almost feels like prison rules - keep genders/races away from each other because if they interact it will probably be violent.

I wondered what would happen if I created a community where the core culture was set by women, and the software and product decisions were also made by women

-> This also seems strange to me and counterproductive. If we build a society where any interaction happens without confrontations against the people that may be causing the issues, in this case "men", then how are we to make progress? Do men and women think differently about the merits of different software technologies or not?

Even when members have opposing views, they’ve given each other the benefit of the doubt and continue to talk productively.

-> Are you implying that men are incapable of this? Or that an environment where men and women interact is incapable of achieving this? Seems regressive...

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#25
post #4
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why exclusive to Facebook users?

Perhaps because Facebook provides an easy and fairly reliable way to determine someone's sex. Many projects including dating sites have relied on it to do authentication for this reason.

A sizeable and growing portion of the population refuses to have any dealing with this shady corporation. Facebook is not a universal authentication platform and never will be.

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#27
post #16

What if i identify as female?

That's a really good question actually and shows the problem with sites like this (especially when connected with Facebook)

I'm not using Facebook's definition of sex to include or exclude anyone. The link to Facebook is so I can check that each new member is real. Anyone who identifies as a woman is invited to join.

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#28
post #10
post #2

Hi! I'm the creator of Leap. Glad to answer questions here.

What’s the current queue look like, how long does it take for someone to get invited? How does moderation go on, what if a discourse gets way off track? There’s no perfect community, but I have high hopes here.

I'm glad to hear it! I look up each person who signs up for the beta to make sure they're a real person, so it depends how many people request access and how fast I go.

So far discourse has not gone off track. When participants disagree they've been able to discuss their views constructively and assume the best in each other. That's something I'm most excited about. I expect there will be cases where that's not true though, so members who don't contribute in a net positive way will lose access to the community.

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#29
post #2

Hi! I'm the creator of Leap. Glad to answer questions here.

I am really conflicted about this. On one hand, I think that it will provide a valuable resource for a large group of people, which is good! On the other hand, an online tech community designed solely for men would be met with hate and massive backlash. If equality is our goal, how will self-segregation help meet that goal?

Not involved with Leap at all, but I've always felt like this sort of thing depends on how much discrimination your group is subjected to. Self-segregation like this provides a forum for constructive discussion, particularly if your group is still subject to discrimination (e.g. being undermined by the dominant group, intentionally targeted by trolls, threatened or cajoled).

I don't know if it's a useful analogy, but I consider it akin to global warming being discussed by climate scientists in a totally public forum. The volume of anti-global warming sentiment and media coverage (both for and against) would completely disrupt such attempts.

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#30
post #21

seems wonderful! just requested a membership :) I've been part of some online tech communities for women, but I found they were too US-centric and it was difficult for me to obtain value from it, hoping Leap will be different

Great! Look forward to having you join!
Post reply on HN