Humor tends to crowd out actual discussion. Why bother typing out a 5 paragraph comment on your thoughts on the article when you can just contribute to that pun

Humor tends to crowd out actual discussion. Why bother typing out a 5 paragraph comment on your thoughts on the article when you can just contribute to that pun thread or just post a quick one liner? In a forum where jokes are encouraged, they tend to take over the actual discussion. Pretty much anyone can contribute to a joke thread (especially when the bar is as low as just repeating memes), but not everyone can hold an actual discussion. Thus, you wind up with a lot more joking about a topic, and very little actual discussion. It vastly decreases the signal to noise ratio. While humor is easy to find on the internet, actual discussion is much harder. I'd like to keep HN focused on discussions.