5 ms·

This is a really great summary with a lot of amusing little details. A couple comments: 1. It sounds like there was confusion for a period of time because the

by madrox 4y ago

This is a really great summary with a lot of amusing little details. A couple comments: 1. It sounds like there was confusion for a period of time because the developer made a joke. I think there really should be a specification for how to annotate humorous comments made on the web. 2. I loved the section spelling out the principle of "don't break the web." This is important, and as we get more and more legacy web the more valuable this principle becomes. That said, I wonder if a day is coming where the browser is disrupted because browser devs are moving too slowly on account of this. Please note: #1 is a joke

itishappy 4y ago
i ThInK tHeRe ReAlLy ShOuLd Be A sPeCiFiCaTiOn FoR hOw To AnNoTaTe HuMoRoUs CoMmEnTs MaDe On ThE wEb. The specification exists, it's just not enforced. If Google and Meta aren't going to step up, I think we should prosecute non-compliance with the full weight of the legal system. This is an existential threat to our society.
- aerovistae 4y ago
  That's really less of a humor tag and more of a condescending sarcasm tag though. I don't see it used as a joke so much as to do an imitation of someone else speaking, repeating something they said (or might allegedly say) in such a way as to make it appear stupid.
  - itishappy 4y ago
    HANDSHAKE FAILED: Missing token validating receipt of humor. Acceptable responses are: ["haha", "lol", "lmao", "lulz"] User "aerovistae" has been flagged for non-compliance.
    - aerovistae 4y ago
      usER "AEROvistAE" hAs beEN fLagGEd fOR non-coMpliaNCE.
    - tanseydavid 4y ago
      ["I'm a Teapot"]
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    People use it all the time to mock themselves and signal their humor intent.
    - aerovistae 4y ago
      peOPle usE it ALl thE timE tO MoCK tHEMSELvES And SignaL tHeIr hUMoR InTeNT.
      - eyelidlessness 4y ago
        I HaD A gooD cHucKle, gAvE YOu aN UpvOTE, AnD WiSHEd I’d dEMoNSTRAtEd THE poiNt IN THe FIRSt PLaCE.
- madrox 4y ago
  Hand me a pitchfork I'm ready to do my part
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  (Alt: spongebob.gif has entered the room)
AceJohnny2 4y ago
> I think there really should be a specification for how to annotate humorous comments made on the web. (I know you're joking but...) Humor relies fundamentally on shared context, and the Internet destroys that shared context. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_collapse I guess the problem is when an in-joke is unexpectedly leaked to an out-group.
gernb 4y ago
Meh, so many things have broken on the web over the years, the "Don't break the web" is kind of bs AFAICT. I've had to re-do so many things that were working when I shipped them but stopped because Chrome or Firefox or Safari changed something and broke it. Heck, you can find probably 100s of examples of pages that no longer work because browsers changed things right here https://experiments.withgoogle.com/collection/chrome https://experiments.withgoogle.com/collection/chrome At the same time, the reason Safari doesn't report MacOS 11 is because too many sites had poorly written detectors that threw exceptions if they didn't see Mac OS 10_???? in the UA string. Here's the userAgent on Safari Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/16.0 Safari/605.1.15 Even though I'm on MacOS 12.6 on an M1 MacBookPro. So there's at least one more example of "don't break the web'
- madrox 4y ago
  You're right in that it's pretty unevenly enforced, but I don't want to penalize the times it is enforced even though it would be convenient.
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  Yup, and it's the exact same reason that "Mozilla/5.0" and "KHTML, like Gecko" are both still in that user agent string.
xwdv 4y ago
You joke, but it is sorely needed, because people simply don’t understand sarcasm very well on the web these days. Personally I think it should be considered a sort of disability, and having these kind of annotations should be a requirement if a website wants to be ADA compliant. In addition, having non-joke annotations helps people identify when a person is being dead serious. Even here on hackernews, Poe’s Law reigns supreme as people struggle to differentiate parody from genuine opinions.
adolph 4y ago
> Please note: #1 is a joke Semantic web with an ontologically complete markup is not a joke and don’t confuse “Web 3.0” with “Web3” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web
bee_rider 4y ago
Delaying the punchline until after 2. made your joke much funnier. When we write the spec for joke syntax we'll have to include this sort of... what is it, lazy-evaluation?
eyelidlessness 4y ago
#2 isn’t a going concern, if anything people now complain that it moves too quickly. IMO that’s a silly complaint but a steady stream of years-long processes being completed is always gonna upset someone.
michaelt 4y ago
> I think there really should be a specification for how to annotate humorous comments made on the web. Scott Fahlman is way ahead of you - in 1982 he proposed [1] an annotation for "attempted humor" - colon-hyphen-right bracket [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Emoticon&oldid=1115092314#Use_of_:-)_and_:-(_as_communication_(1982) https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Emoticon&oldid=11...

by madrox 4y ago

itishappy 4y ago

i ThInK tHeRe ReAlLy ShOuLd Be A sPeCiFiCaTiOn FoR hOw To AnNoTaTe HuMoRoUs CoMmEnTs MaDe On ThE wEb. The specification exists, it's just not enforced. If Google and Meta aren't going to step up, I think we should prosecute non-compliance with the full weight of the legal system. This is an existential threat to our society.

aerovistae 4y ago
That's really less of a humor tag and more of a condescending sarcasm tag though. I don't see it used as a joke so much as to do an imitation of someone else speaking, repeating something they said (or might allegedly say) in such a way as to make it appear stupid.
- itishappy 4y ago
  HANDSHAKE FAILED: Missing token validating receipt of humor. Acceptable responses are: ["haha", "lol", "lmao", "lulz"] User "aerovistae" has been flagged for non-compliance.
  - aerovistae 4y ago
    usER "AEROvistAE" hAs beEN fLagGEd fOR non-coMpliaNCE.
  - tanseydavid 4y ago
    ["I'm a Teapot"]
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  People use it all the time to mock themselves and signal their humor intent.
  - aerovistae 4y ago
    peOPle usE it ALl thE timE tO MoCK tHEMSELvES And SignaL tHeIr hUMoR InTeNT.
    - eyelidlessness 4y ago
      I HaD A gooD cHucKle, gAvE YOu aN UpvOTE, AnD WiSHEd I’d dEMoNSTRAtEd THE poiNt IN THe FIRSt PLaCE.
madrox 4y ago
Hand me a pitchfork I'm ready to do my part
eyelidlessness 4y ago
(Alt: spongebob.gif has entered the room)

AceJohnny2 4y ago

> I think there really should be a specification for how to annotate humorous comments made on the web. (I know you're joking but...) Humor relies fundamentally on shared context, and the Internet destroys that shared context. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_collapse I guess the problem is when an in-joke is unexpectedly leaked to an out-group.

gernb 4y ago

Meh, so many things have broken on the web over the years, the "Don't break the web" is kind of bs AFAICT. I've had to re-do so many things that were working when I shipped them but stopped because Chrome or Firefox or Safari changed something and broke it. Heck, you can find probably 100s of examples of pages that no longer work because browsers changed things right here https://experiments.withgoogle.com/collection/chrome https://experiments.withgoogle.com/collection/chrome At the same time, the reason Safari doesn't report MacOS 11 is because too many sites had poorly written detectors that threw exceptions if they didn't see Mac OS 10_???? in the UA string. Here's the userAgent on Safari Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/16.0 Safari/605.1.15 Even though I'm on MacOS 12.6 on an M1 MacBookPro. So there's at least one more example of "don't break the web'

madrox 4y ago
You're right in that it's pretty unevenly enforced, but I don't want to penalize the times it is enforced even though it would be convenient.
jakelazaroff 4y ago
Yup, and it's the exact same reason that "Mozilla/5.0" and "KHTML, like Gecko" are both still in that user agent string.

xwdv 4y ago

You joke, but it is sorely needed, because people simply don’t understand sarcasm very well on the web these days. Personally I think it should be considered a sort of disability, and having these kind of annotations should be a requirement if a website wants to be ADA compliant. In addition, having non-joke annotations helps people identify when a person is being dead serious. Even here on hackernews, Poe’s Law reigns supreme as people struggle to differentiate parody from genuine opinions.

adolph 4y ago

> Please note: #1 is a joke Semantic web with an ontologically complete markup is not a joke and don’t confuse “Web 3.0” with “Web3” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web

bee_rider 4y ago

Delaying the punchline until after 2. made your joke much funnier. When we write the spec for joke syntax we'll have to include this sort of... what is it, lazy-evaluation?

eyelidlessness 4y ago

#2 isn’t a going concern, if anything people now complain that it moves too quickly. IMO that’s a silly complaint but a steady stream of years-long processes being completed is always gonna upset someone.

michaelt 4y ago

> I think there really should be a specification for how to annotate humorous comments made on the web. Scott Fahlman is way ahead of you - in 1982 he proposed [1] an annotation for "attempted humor" - colon-hyphen-right bracket [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Emoticon&oldid=1115092314#Use_of_:-)_and_:-(_as_communication_(1982) https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Emoticon&oldid=11...