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If this is not a satirical comment, can I ask you to justify this position? What is disturbed by having a bit of humor alongside our intellectual curiosity? I c

If this is not a satirical comment, can I ask you to justify this position? What is disturbed by having a bit of humor alongside our intellectual curiosity? I could have missed it, but don't see anything discouraging humor (referential or otherwise) in the HN guidelines[1] or FAQ[2] with regard to commentary. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

johnnyworker 3y ago
The keyword is "alongside intellectual curiosity". If you can make a point in a funny manner, do it. But if just making jokes becomes accepted, jokes drown out everything else, simply because they are infinite. Like all those gaming subreddits that consist 99% of "funny thing that just happened" or "this reference to a thing that occurs in the game, which you can recognize as occurring in the game to confirm that you have, indeed, played that game". You can call that socializing but to me it's just turning everything into everything/nothing forums. If HN becomes soft on that, we need a new HN.
callahad 3y ago
Nothing wrong with humor, but on a completely personal level, it does frustrate me when the top comment is entirely superficial, since it adds nothing to the conversation. And subjectively, it feels like there's been an uptick in joke / meme / information-free comments and their ranking in the wake of recent Twitter and Reddit turmoil. But hey, I've been here for 15 years, and forum cultures change over time. I wouldn't overindex on my feelings.
- krapp 3y ago
  What's ironic is the tangential threads complaining about humor on HN throw far more noise and entropy into these threads than the jokes themselves. People could have just ignored it, or downvoted it and moved on, but no, someone made a joke and now we need to stop the car and have discourse about how HN is turning into Reddit. Knuckles must be rapped. Fingers wagged and pearls clutched. Again.
WeylandYutani 3y ago
It disturbs people's autism apparently.

johnnyworker 3y ago

The keyword is "alongside intellectual curiosity". If you can make a point in a funny manner, do it. But if just making jokes becomes accepted, jokes drown out everything else, simply because they are infinite. Like all those gaming subreddits that consist 99% of "funny thing that just happened" or "this reference to a thing that occurs in the game, which you can recognize as occurring in the game to confirm that you have, indeed, played that game". You can call that socializing but to me it's just turning everything into everything/nothing forums. If HN becomes soft on that, we need a new HN.

callahad 3y ago

Nothing wrong with humor, but on a completely personal level, it does frustrate me when the top comment is entirely superficial, since it adds nothing to the conversation. And subjectively, it feels like there's been an uptick in joke / meme / information-free comments and their ranking in the wake of recent Twitter and Reddit turmoil. But hey, I've been here for 15 years, and forum cultures change over time. I wouldn't overindex on my feelings.

krapp 3y ago
What's ironic is the tangential threads complaining about humor on HN throw far more noise and entropy into these threads than the jokes themselves. People could have just ignored it, or downvoted it and moved on, but no, someone made a joke and now we need to stop the car and have discourse about how HN is turning into Reddit. Knuckles must be rapped. Fingers wagged and pearls clutched. Again.

WeylandYutani 3y ago

It disturbs people's autism apparently.