You got a subtle reply from mbateman, but I'll add two points. First, it's a good idea to read http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com

You got a subtle reply from mbateman, but I'll add two points. First, it's a good idea to read http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html; notice the penultimate one. Second, the downvoting of quips on HN needs to be understood in relation to Reddit, where nearly every popular thread quickly becomes dominated by a long chain of (often genuinely funny) wisecracks. Experience shows that this pattern drowns out substantive discussion, and HN is all about the latter. What people here are downvoting is not merely the individual wisecrack, but that whole pattern. It's a kind of prophylaxis. Lack of a sense of humor has nothing to do with this; it's a conscious tradeoff. This kind of downvoting has another virtue, which is that it's silent. If it added noise to the conversation, that would be ironic -- and annoying, too. If one thing's worse than misdirected wisecracks it's humorless metadiscussion. I'll stop here. :)