... well, that bit is a p.r.r.f.i. only in the same way as things like "Are you really as stupid as you sound?" are. I repeat: Douglas_Reay's post contains no blank-slatey attempts to explain anything and makes no claims that anyone's discriminating against anyone else. It just doesn't.
Well, if you bring up a a bunch of links about learning how not to come off as creepy, and pose it as a salient topic of discussion to the community, you're tacitly implying that people coming off as creepy is a problem of particular relevance to the community.
The connotations are such that, rather than having to make explicit that there have been cases where people at Less Wrong meetups have been offended by behavior they've found creepy, it could reasonably be taken as implied, unless explicitly disavowed.
If there is evidence of such a pattern, then it is certainly worth knowing about. But posing it as an explanation, or even a contributing factor, in the gender imbalance of the community, is something that could reasonably be taken as insulting.
Suppose you have an online acquaintance who's rather unpopular. Your only information on why they might be unpopular comes from your online interactions with them and what they tell you themself, and you're unsure why they have so little social success based on that information. So, you suggest "Maybe you should try showering more often."
Now, if the person does in fact have poor personal hygiene, this could be the exact behavior modification they need to achieve better social success. But this is not gently suggesting that one possible contributing factor to their lack of social success is poor personal hygiene. In terms of ordinary human communication, it amounts to a tacit accusation that they're a smelly person.
I parse Filipe's comment as being something along the lines of "Do we have evidence that this is a pervasive pattern in this community? If so, I acknowledge this as as being a potentially valuable contribution. If not, I find the tacit assumption that it is somewhat offensive." If no such assumption is intended, then the post would do well to disclaim it.
I think all it implies is that creepiness could be a problem. There have been a number of recent instances -- much discussed online -- where it seems to have been, in the SF and atheist communities; that seems to me plenty enough to explain Douglas's decision to bring it up.
I don't find the analogy with suggesting that an unpopular person shower more very convincing. The main (though not the only) reason is that the dynamics of giving and taking offence seem to me quite different in the two cases, on account of the difference between saying something to on...
One of the lessons highlighted in the thread "Less Wrong NYC: Case Study of a Successful Rationalist Chapter" is Gender ratio matters.
There have recently been a number of articles addressing one social skills issue that might be affecting this, from the perspective of a geeky/sciencefiction community with similar attributes to LessWrong, and I want to link to these, not just so the people potentially causing problems get to read them, but also so everyone else knows the resource is there and has a name for the problem, which may facilitate wider discussion and make it easier for others to know when to point towards the resources those who would benefit by them.
However before I do, in the light of RedRobot's comment in the "Of Gender and Rationality" thread, I'd like to echo a sentiment from one of the articles, that people exhibiting this behaviour may be of any gender and may victimise upon any gender. And so, while it may be correlated with a particular gender, it is the behaviour that should be focused upon, and turning this thread into bashing of one gender (or defensiveness against perceived bashing) would be unhelpful.
Ok, disclaimers out of the way, here are the links:
Some of those raise deeper issues about rape culture and audience as enabler, but the TLDR summary is:
EDITED TO ADD:
Despite the way some of the links are framed as being addressed to creepers, this post is aimed at least as much at the community as a whole, intended to trigger a discussion on how the community should best go about handling such a problem once identified, with the TLDR being "set of restraints to place on someone who is burning the commons", rather that a complete description that guarantees that anyone who doesn't meet it isn't creepy. (Thank you to jsteinhardt for clearly verbalising the misinterpretation - for discussion see his reply to this post)