The whole "LW Women" was simply a project to claim LW as another territory for a specific tribe. It used dishonest methods of argumentation, and as soon as it failed the author was no longer interested in rationalist community -- which makes me suspect they were never interested in the community in the first place, other than as another place to conquer for their tribe.
I consider it one of two historical attempts where another tribe tried to conquer Less Wrong for them; the other one was the mass downvoting campaign by Eugine Nier. In both cases, I try not to blame all people from the given tribe, but I do not ignore the fact that those tribes can be dangerous to LW. Whether by public shaming or by secretly exploiting the rules, in both cases the goal was to remove their perceived ideological opponents from LW.
The unfortunate consequence is that both situations made a part of a debate taboo. We didn't debate gender balance since then, if I remember correctly. We tried to have a rational debate on politics a few times, but it was always immediately used as a platform to promote one specific fringe group which tries very hard to associate itself publicly with LW despite being only a tiny minority here.
I could like to have a debate about gender balance on LW -- and let's be honest, it's not just about LW; if you go to any atheist conference, or AI conference, you will find a similar imbalance -- but the debate itself should be rational. By which I mean:
People speak for themselves, or link to solid evidence, or say "I am not sure, but it seems to me that maybe ...". As opposed to e.g. speaking in the name of all women not participating on LW because obviously they must have exactly the same opinion as you do.
Avoiding blatantly manipulative techniques, such as using filtered evidence to prove your point; e.g. by asking women about their experience, but not asking men whether they had similar experience; or pressure like "nice website you have here, would be a shame if someone accused you of sexism".
What was so bad about it, anyway? My most salient participation in those threads has been a disappointed comment on how easily baited into controversy LWers are, contrary to my expectations at the time. A comment count in the triple or quadruple digits, on a website that purportedly taught its users how to overcome bias, stank to me of loads and loads of pent-up "strong opinions" just waiting to be shared.
But that's a comment about the users, not about the topic, or the intent behind it. It didn't read as a feminist crusade, except to the extent ...
[I apologize if this is considered lower-quality content, but I felt this was too big for an open thread post, and Discussion is currently the next-lowest option.]
Inspired by the recent discussion surrounding Lesswrong, Effective Altruism Forum and Slate Star Codex: Harm Reduction, this thread is intended for brainstorming ideas to improve Less Wrong, and also for including polls with your ideas as an easy way to get an estimate of what people in the community think of them.
Information on putting polls in comments can be found here. Please be thoughtful about how you word your poll options, and (in the case of multiple-choice polls) include a "no vote" or equivalent option so that people who just want to see the poll results won't be forced into picking an option they don't really support.
Thanks to everyone who shares ideas and everyone who takes the time to think about them and vote!