These HN comments are some of the most disconcerting that I've seen in a long time. The amount of ignorance displayed in some of them makes me--a white male--question this community. I could only imagine what message they would send to a minority.

Here's my take on a few comments in this thread. (I don't mean to single anyone out.)

>>Imagine if people were criticizing a lineup because there were too many women.

If our society treated males and females equally, then this hypothetical would make sense. But in a society where females face discrimination their entire lives and barriers can often prevent from reaching their potential, I think such a hypothetical is silly to bring up.

It is everyone's responsibility to try to adjust for this inequality in society. That might include going out of your way as a conference organizer to encourage more qualified minorities to apply as speakers. As some HN'ers have brought up, quality will not be jeopardized in the process.

>>To pick out a single conference in our industry with this property is textbook selection bias [1] and doesn't demonstrate any kind of discrimination at all.

If you notice, no one (as far as I can tell) explicitly called this discrimination. There will always be people who question the validity of things like these, and why shouldn't there be? Conferences, if they did their share of work, should be able to hold up against arguments like these (if they're invalid).

Yes, statistically some conferences might have gone out of their way to find minorities and failed to do so. Looking at any single case, though, such a scenario is unlikely. One should not just say, "Oh, statistics show that this might happen by chance, and therefore no one should question the validity of the selection process."

>>The problem is statistics. If there are only a few women who are applicable - simply due to the sad fact that there are so few women in the field - then there will be a lot of conference where random selection will mean there are no women in the lineup.

Like before, the problem cannot be blamed on statistics. I don't believe that there will be a lot of conferences where no qualified women could present at. If they couldn't be found, I'm guessing that--most of the times--the organizers didn't look hard enough. This is just a guess, but I'm not going to assume the utopian society that others on this page have and say that everyone tries their hardest to attain diversity.

>> Dear God! As if it wasn't hard enough to arrange a conference, apparently you have to make sure to invite every minority as a speaker at that conference too.

Misunderstanding the issue at hand and making outrageous claims like these does not improve my opinion of HN.

>> I really hope the responsible trolls... [emphasis added]

Enough said. Calling people who raise valid concerns trolls (or muppets, like someone else did) is not respectful. The fact that such an ad-hominem attack on HN got upvoted to the top is shocking.

>>Why should that have been their goal? This isn't a conference about racial issues or gender issues.

Taken from the BritRuby's website:

Our mission statement was to encourage Ruby developers to unite and
create a community, which would allow such to network, exchange ideas
and provoke innovation for the future of Ruby.

Britain has 51% women. Women are underrepresented in the Ruby community, but there is no reason why it should stay like that. Is not anyone's job to increase the percentage of female coders. It is everyone's.

HN user luigi says it better than I ever could:

The act of organizing a conference makes one a leader for their
technical community. We all know we have a diversity problem.
And conference organizers are responsible for helping address
that problem. Leaders should lead.

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If I were pg, I would close this thread before we make a fool of ourselves even further. People are seriously questioning this community and its views on gender imbalance in technology, minorities, etc. This is not an isolated case.