If you think about it, the relationship of the GeekList incident to HN was pure coincidence. Some company had a video with a scantily clad girl in it. That's the content of that news item. Would you have considered it related to HN if the company would have been making beer, or hovers, or cars, or whatever? The only assumed relationship was that the company carried the word "geek" in it's name. It's 2012, so I wouldn't even assume that every HN reader is automatically a geek anymore - in fact, does geek even still have much of a meaning?
But anyway, the point is: that story really was not HN material at all. The policies for HN clearly state to refrain from political discussions.
Would you have considered it related to HN if the company would have been making beer, or hovers, or cars, or whatever?
Of course not. But it wasn't about any of those things, it was about a tech startup where "all bad-ass code monkeys around the globe can communicate, brag, build their street cred and get found". It's a site both made and used by exactly the type of people that make up the HN audience. How could it not be relevant?
And I'm confused by your comment about political discussions- the GeekList discussion certainly wasn't political.
Don't blame me or others for what one company does. That is just ridiculous. Even if they claim they represent "us". They don't represent me, so I felt entitled to flag their story. It certainly doesn't provide any statistics on the sexism of geeks. It is just a bad anecdote (a company claiming to cater to geeks behaves in a sexist way -> all geeks must be sexist).
Why on earth do you think I am blaming you? I'm not. I'm not suggesting that their actions represent the actions of "geeks", either. All I am saying is that GeekList is a company made by techies and used by techies- and article about them might be of interest to techies. I don't think that's a giant leap in thinking. Aside from anything else it was an instructive tale on how (not) to deal with customer complaints.
Disagree, because the context and discussion very much related to people working in various subsets of tech industries. The problem of sexism in, say, IT services varies tremendously from that in, say, advertising.
I agree that there were too many Geeklist articles, and that these ones deserved to be killed.
But the fact that Geeklist is a tech company is a distraction. The real issue is how to deal with customers - even shouty sweary customers. "Don't get baited by your customers; especially over Twitter" is about the only useful thing coming from that thread.
(Anything else, such as "don't use semi-naked women in advertising" is too political (ie, unlikely to lead to any useful interesting discussion) or too obvious to mention.)
The ban on political articles on HN is needed. When I first started here I thought it'd be great to see the comments to political threads. Surely HN would be a place where people could put aside partisan politics and give thoughtful reasoned responses, backed by evidence, leading to rational discussion. Unfortunately not. Political threads pretty quickly collapse into bad-natured bickering.
I'd speculate that women seem to have no trouble entering that industry, much less succeeding, and they're not taught (explicitly nor implicitly) from an early age that advertising is "for boys" because "copywriting is hard" or some such.
Speculation on my part, and I won't hesitate to agree that far too much advertising is sexist. But then I'd end up on an off-topic rant. :)
That's like saying that an article about a merger wouldn't be relevant if the company was making beer or cars or whatever. Of course it wouldn't, unless there was some extenuating circumstances. When the company is a geek startup targeted at developers, I would think the presumption would be that it is relevant, unless there are extenuating circumstances.
But anyway, the point is: that story really was not HN material at all. The policies for HN clearly state to refrain from political discussions.