Wikipedia is an interesting case study in that not only has it not been overrun by joke memes, but it has virtually eliminated humor from both its public-facing

Wikipedia is an interesting case study in that not only has it not been overrun by joke memes, but it has virtually eliminated humor from both its public-facing articles and its internal communication. I spent several years as a fairly active member of the community -- never an admin, but enough to get frequent unsolicited requests to voice in on edit disputes. During that time, every word I typed was in that awkward mock-professional tone civil servants use, masked only slightly by saccharine PR-speak when talking to noobs. Jokes were a dead giveaway you were an outsider, and there's nothing more important in the world of WP than sounding like you know what you're doing. Despite all the annoying pretense and the persistent damage to my writing style, I suspect this sort of culture might be necessary, or at least not harmful, to what WP is trying to accomplish. Formality is a sign that a group of people needs to get something done despite not necessarily liking each other very much. This has always been ubiquitous in the physical world of geographically assigned coworkers, but quite rare on the Internet.