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".