Most suggestions seem to focus on making the ideas unattractive somehow (validate them, write them down, sleep on them).
On the other hand only a couple of days ago there was a post by Jason Friedman who recommended starting on an idea as long as the enthusiasm is still fresh.
Until a couple of days ago I only took Bitcoin serious. But dogecoin might me think twice. And today I learned about Cthulhu "offerings" (another Bitcoin currency). I could just imagine how some people would prefer to use "offerings".
No idea how things will actually play out, though.
Most development energy is certainly poured into Bitcoin, but it tends to be easy to transfer the technical progress in Bitcoin to other cryptocurrencies. The wallets for dogecoin and Litecoin seem to be forked from Bitcoin, too.
So you'd worry about hurting the feelings of somebody who just overstepped into your private space? Doesn't make sense. Why not just say "hands off" or whatever, no need to back it up with an elaborate theory.
If she doesn't say it's inappropriate, how are other people to know that it isn't? It would be really awkward to approach two people and tell them "hey what you are doing is inappropriate" if none of them has signaled anything wrong.
On the other hand women also receive special attention in tech circles. I'm not convinced that one is more overwhelming than the other. Maybe some men can't accept female techies, but they should be easy to avoid. Meanwhile the whole tech world is falling over themselves trying to entice women.
Of course if some women take it as an insult if men are enthusiastic about them being interested in tech, there is a problem. In my opinion that is a very stupid way to look at such situations (as the OP did). Just because it is rare to encounter a woman in tech and men therefore act surprised, it doesn't mean they think women are too stupid for it. It just means that it is rare, nothing else. I think usually they really mean it in a positive way if they express their surprise.
How many women do you personally know that you can have a conversation about Bitcoin with? So imagine you actually meet somebody like the OP who has thought about all sorts of aspects of Bitcoin. It is unusual, so personally I would be interested in how/why it happened. What is demeaning about that?
That list is well known, but I think it shows the opposite of what you claim - contrast the number of incidents to the number of tech events and people involved in tech. Apart from being merely anecdotal anyway.
I suppose whole sub-economies will emerge. Some will run on Bitcoin, others on dogecoin, others on whatnot. And of course there are markets for exchanging cryptocurrencies. And there will be tools for just accepting any currency, if the salesman doesn't care. For example there is a widget for accepting dogecoins that automatically converts all dogecoins earned into Bitcoins.
Those submarkets will perhaps compete with each other. If few people accept Bitcoin but many accept dogecoin, the price of Bitcoin will fall relative to dogecoin. Or so I imagine.
Sorry, I probably really misread you. I also read the article again and personally I don't think the situation sounds that threatening - there were a whole bunch of people there, including a good male friend.
Nevertheless, "she could have said something" is of course not an excuse for rude behavior. I wouldn't want to excuse his behavior. As I said, if I knew him, I probably wouldn't like him much and certainly wouldn't encourage him to attend further meetups.
"I wouldn't trust him after seeing him display that behavior. Would you?"
Of course I wouldn't. Neither would most people in the Bitcoin community. Nevertheless, now we have "this is how women are being treated at Bitcoin meetups".
Btw not only would I not trust him, I also wouldn't like him.
Yeah, let's just get it over with and say he basically raped her. Let's increase the counter for "women get raped in public all the time" up by one. After all, even if he didn't rape her, the psychological damage was the same, so it counts. Also, let's put that guy in jail for rape.
It sounds to me as if you don't have a lot of experience. Neither have I, but I have met women who flirted with other men so that their boy-friends could get in a fight with them. Or women who would claw your eyes out because you hit their boy-friend, even if the same boy-friend hit them a minute ago.
But why do I bother - just go ahead and do what you feel is right. Maybe your feeling for such situations is simply better than that of other people.
How many times have you tried to interfere so far?
There are already a lot of forks of Bitcoin, some even moderately successful.
Actually independent of feminism I have long wondered if other cryptocoins might supersede Bitcoin exactly for the reason of fairness. Assume the world wakes up to Bitcoin in a couple of years. Then the BTC wealth will be very unequally distributed. Why should people start using BTC if they are poor in it? They could as well say "hey, cryptocurrencies are swell, but let's use another one were nobody had a headstart".
I guess part of dogecoins success story is that everybody got rich in dogecoin quickly (1 Million doges per minute). A lot of people who didn't like Bitcoin like dogecoin.
This story made me realize that eventually we will get some sort of "FemCoin", though. Anybody who continues to use Bitcoin will be labeled a sexist and be made a social pariah.
The reason is that women didn't have a fair chance to get into Bitcoin in time because the community was so hostile. Therefore all the Bitcoin wealth is unfairly shifted to white men.
It's not always easy to know what kind of relationship people are in. That's probably a reason why people tend to wait until it escalates beyond a certain point.
If people would interfere too soon, feminists wouldn't be happy either. Because that kind of behavior would imply that women are weak and unable to take care of themselves.
That's just blindness, though. They only see the rising rents, not that they can't afford the rents anymore because they don't have tech jobs. It's just different sides of the same coin.
I have nothing against it, although it wasn't my personal taste. I just want to point out that being exaggerated and semi-crazy is not the only way to get kids excited. It is maybe the "TV show for kids" way. I often cringe inside when I witness that way of dealing with kids, because to me it seems not very genuine.
Again, if people like it, and kids like it, fine. I just wanted to comment because I think it would be sad if everything for kids would be converted into that kind of format.
Actually the whole premise of "getting kids interested" already points to a problem. Kids are naturally interested. You don't have to go into manic mode to get them interested.
Less punishment for controversial comments in controversial topics.
Difficult to explain. In short, I actually have a six years old account with karma in the top 100, but today I wouldn't be allowed into HN anymore. I temporarily disabled my main account for productivity reasons a couple of months ago, and since then I created 3 new accounts when I was drawn into controversial discussions. After a good start, two of them were hellbanned, both times rather to my surprise (that's why I am on the 3rd now). I don't expect this one to last very long either.
I felt a bit guilty for taking part in controversial topics, but at least I figured the controversy stayed in those threads. I am not a troll, merely somebody who wants to understand things as objectively as possible and therefore is not always aligned with the mainstream opinion.
I was going to suggest to ban controversial topics rather than controversial users, but since that would sadly involve all topics involving female coders that is probably not workable. So perhaps an idea would be to punish controversial comments less if they appear within controversial topics? I assume I was hellbanned because I received too many downvotes, or maybe the majority of mods just don't like me.
I'm sure I won't be missed, and perhaps all is working as you want it to be. I don't think we really can escape our own filter bubble. But HN is pretty much my only news source, so naturally it saddens me that today I apparently am not welcome anymore - and probably lots of other people feel the same.
On the other hand only a couple of days ago there was a post by Jason Friedman who recommended starting on an idea as long as the enthusiasm is still fresh.