4 ms·

It's more that there are large numbers of people who consistently don't get humour, either for cultural reasons or deficiencies in their humour glands or whatev

It's more that there are large numbers of people who consistently don't get humour, either for cultural reasons or deficiencies in their humour glands or whatever. On the other hand, in forums where people upvote humour, there can be mechanisms that actually are counterproductive. E.g. on Reddit where there is something serious that you are interested in, but some idiot starts a punning thread which takes off and runs for pages. Or slashdot, where a witty one line (simplistic) put down off a complex issue will recieve maximum karma, whereas a well thought out retort will struggle to break the readability threshold. Hacker News has a number of mechanisms for impeding flame-wars, and I think some of them also impede the flow of humour. No fast replies for instance slows things down, and also the depth algorithm because PG doesn't like deep threads. Another one is de-emphasising karma. If people hand out karma for being entertained, then the system 'rewards' you for being entertaining, so again people go for the slashdot style one-off witty put down. On the gripping hand, now that HN de-emphsises karma (and has weird rules about what can and cannot be down-voted), I'm much less likely to actually bother. Karma is already pointless, but rubbing our faces in it simply reduces participation. The ideal system would 'reward' well thought out replies, and I don't see the current system doing that anytime soon. On the invisible hand humour is an important part of geek culture, as are references to things such as invisible hands and gripping hands. I'm not sure why that is, but word-play and recursion (important parts of being a really clever programmer) are already pretty close to humour, or possibly even forming some of the foundations of it. Which leads me to conjecture that all of the really good programmers have a healthy sense of humour, and that implies that if hacker news is overrun with people who don't have a good sense of humour, that would indicate the ratio of good programmers here is falling. Why would that be? Perhaps because of the emphasis on money, and winning the startup lottery. The programmers who are only in it for the money tend to view themselves as more 'serious' - so I suspect they are the source of the "humourless git" demographic.

m_myers 15y ago
I don't think that downvotes necessarily mean that people didn't get the joke. If I see a witty one-liner comment to a serious story, my normal reaction is "Ha ha ha! Downvote." Or else I ignore it entirely. (And sometimes it simply _isn't_ very funny.) I just don't think we need to encourage content-free comments here; there are plenty of places to go if you want to make fun of the news. Then again, I moderate a site that's been accused of taking too hard a line on "fun", so maybe I shouldn't talk.
- vacri 15y ago
  The problem I have is the inconsistency. I remember posting a sarcastic comment in a sea of sarcasting comments, then saying 'seriously though' and adding genuine content. Mine was the only comment that went gray. I've seen this stuff time and time again with other users - several comments of fluff, but only one gets pounded. What gets pounded in one thread gets rewarded in others - sometimes I'll post a snarky, devoid-of-content comment, hit post, and then wonder just how fast it will go dead and next thing I know it's really popular. It really is inconsistent, and that bugs me.
  - dasil003 15y ago
    Well all comment voting systems are inconsistent just because it's tough to get a uniform number of views on comments over time. And now that vote counts are hidden, things are even more wonky in terms of what sees vote volumes. But in terms of humor I think it's fairly straightforward: don't do it unless you think of something that's really fucking funny (and hopefully a little insightful). If it's funny enough you will get upvoted just by sheer force of charisma. If it's just marginally funny you will likely get buried, and I think that's a good thing, because a lot of people aren't as funny as they think they are, and you don't need to look beyond Reddit to see what a culture of one-liners does to a discussion forum. If it's just some simple pun then likely many of the readers already thought of it and don't particularly want to read it over and over again.
vacri 15y ago
I really hate the downmod system here, but you can see my further complaints in my profile rather than repeat them again. But I wanted to respond to this: now that HN de-emphsises karma I don't think it de-emphasises karma much at all. On every single page of HN you view, your karma is there in high-contrast lettering right next to your handle. It's also not quite pointless as there are several features that get unlocked by high karma. I'd love to see the user's karma score banished from everywhere but their profile page. I don't want to be reminded that I have a score on every page visit. On the humour thing, it's not that I don't see humour on the site, it's that the same humour can be punished or rewarded depending on the alignment of the planets or whatever.

m_myers 15y ago

I don't think that downvotes necessarily mean that people didn't get the joke. If I see a witty one-liner comment to a serious story, my normal reaction is "Ha ha ha! Downvote." Or else I ignore it entirely. (And sometimes it simply _isn't_ very funny.) I just don't think we need to encourage content-free comments here; there are plenty of places to go if you want to make fun of the news. Then again, I moderate a site that's been accused of taking too hard a line on "fun", so maybe I shouldn't talk.

vacri 15y ago
The problem I have is the inconsistency. I remember posting a sarcastic comment in a sea of sarcasting comments, then saying 'seriously though' and adding genuine content. Mine was the only comment that went gray. I've seen this stuff time and time again with other users - several comments of fluff, but only one gets pounded. What gets pounded in one thread gets rewarded in others - sometimes I'll post a snarky, devoid-of-content comment, hit post, and then wonder just how fast it will go dead and next thing I know it's really popular. It really is inconsistent, and that bugs me.
- dasil003 15y ago
  Well all comment voting systems are inconsistent just because it's tough to get a uniform number of views on comments over time. And now that vote counts are hidden, things are even more wonky in terms of what sees vote volumes. But in terms of humor I think it's fairly straightforward: don't do it unless you think of something that's really fucking funny (and hopefully a little insightful). If it's funny enough you will get upvoted just by sheer force of charisma. If it's just marginally funny you will likely get buried, and I think that's a good thing, because a lot of people aren't as funny as they think they are, and you don't need to look beyond Reddit to see what a culture of one-liners does to a discussion forum. If it's just some simple pun then likely many of the readers already thought of it and don't particularly want to read it over and over again.

vacri 15y ago

I really hate the downmod system here, but you can see my further complaints in my profile rather than repeat them again. But I wanted to respond to this: now that HN de-emphsises karma I don't think it de-emphasises karma much at all. On every single page of HN you view, your karma is there in high-contrast lettering right next to your handle. It's also not quite pointless as there are several features that get unlocked by high karma. I'd love to see the user's karma score banished from everywhere but their profile page. I don't want to be reminded that I have a score on every page visit. On the humour thing, it's not that I don't see humour on the site, it's that the same humour can be punished or rewarded depending on the alignment of the planets or whatever.