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> An online community should feel like an online pub. It should have a vibe, some regulars, inside jokes, and a decorum that is somewhat well enforced. They're

by bmacho 3y ago

> An online community should feel like an online pub. It should have a vibe, some regulars, inside jokes, and a decorum that is somewhat well enforced. They're cosy places where a sense of belonging encourages participation and good behaviour. > HN is like that. HN is the only place that is not a pub: jokes are frowned upon, and even moderated out. Post Valuable Content, or GTFO. You can joke and feel belonging literally everywhere else, catpost half drunk and high, noone cares really, from the small subreddits and discord servers and fb groups to the big subreddits, discord servers, fb groups. > But now every social media website became like that one pedestrian street with the H&M and the McDonalds: a generic commercial space built around spending money. We must have a different internet, every other place I know is full of personality and total unique, people repeat the same sets of inside jokes over and over. HN is way the driest and most soulless.

r00fus 3y ago
> HN is way the driest and most soulless. Well if you are looking for memes and catposts, yeah, the S/N ratio here is quite low. Honestly I think of those things as noise, so I see S/N of HN as much higher. I can always go elsewhere for the vibes.
- markjonsona989 3y ago
  My instinct was to agree with the comment above, but after giving it a few minutes I think I'd rather have a moderated "soulless" HN. It seems to me that there is a fine line between innocent jokes and full-blown juvenile behaviour. The amount of effort you would need to invest into sustaining such a place is not worth it, best to just not allow it at all. There are plenty of places where you can get your dose of jokes and fun. One thing that keeps immature and rude people away is precisely the "dullness" that the post above speaks of. People get tired and move on, leaving the place clean and tidy for others to use. HN has problems of course; downvote bullying is one of them. I'm not saying HN is perfect, but I'd rather not turn it into Reddit or Youtube. So I don't know where this leaves HN between the "pub" and "commercial street".
  - soerxpso 3y ago
    I prefer it this way. I would love to see original jokes on HN, but the issue is that if you allow "jokes" in general, there's a flood of low-effort repetition of popular phrases or comments where the only "comedic" value is that they've forced something into a cliche sentence structure. That feels more soulless than the way HN is, because comments get so samey. You see the same effect sort of start to creep in on certain political posts, where people feel that they can achieve a cheap sense of attention and comradery for expressing a trite idea instead of a joke (comments that mostly amount to "Elon Musk is a mean man! Who else agrees???")
  - epolanski 3y ago
    I think HN is fine as it is. I come here because it is one of the very few places where you can have interesting discussions and read interesting comments from people with a similar intent and interest.
  - ahartmetz 3y ago
    The library, the café or the debate club maybe. The café was the first pub-like place where people did mostly not drink alcohol. Reportedly, it was an inportant place for the enlightenment period of history. Let's not oversell HN here, though...
    - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
      Central European cafes sell spirits, too. A cognac makes a fine accompaniment to a coffee. It is foreign franchise coffee places like Starbucks don't sell alcohol at all, and that is a major part of why they feel so foreign.
      - ahartmetz 3y ago
        They do, but the general atmosphere is far less boozy anyway. Some years ago, a friend introduced me to caffè corretto - espresso with grappa. Pretty good stuff, too.
  - Gravityloss 3y ago
paganel 3y ago
There are no jokes in here, but HN definitely has a posting/comment "culture", a vibe, as the OP calls it, that's for sure. For example I could never understood how come the rationalist thing was not derided to the moon and the back, especially after that crypto debacle with the Bahamas guy. But while there was a slight reaction shorlty after the fact that rationalist mindset has returned here in full force.
logdap 3y ago
I see jokes here often enough, but they have to be tasteful, original and clever. What doesn't fly here is the lazy reddit style of joking where you just quote some lame meme or movie quip for the millionth time.
bozhark 3y ago
“catpost half drunk and high” Is the theme of our online pub
- smcin 3y ago
  'Miaowtual Assured Destruction'
weeblewobble 3y ago
Sometimes I feel this way and then I come across a post where dang hasn’t gotten around to blowing away the low effort joke comments. Turns out it sucks
account42 3y ago
> HN is the only place that is not a pub: jokes are frowned upon, and even moderated out. Jokes regularly get upvoted here, the bar just happens to be a bit higher than inane Reddit pun threads.
berniedurfee 3y ago
That’s the thing I appreciate _most_ about HN. The focus is on shop talk. Discuss science, tech, philosophy and other interesting topics without a constant stream of nonsense. I find it very difficult to not reply on HN with a quick joke or pun or flame with no substance, but I don’t, usually. I really like the high S/N ratio. It’s why I come here every day.
dredmorbius 3y ago
On HN jokes are possible, but they've got to be quite good, and are typically best included as seasoning to a comment rather than as freestanding comments of their own. I've done this myself, notably in my Pompeii comment of a few years ago, which was well-received (better than most of my efforts): <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22133112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22133112> Dang's written on this many times, typical: Personally, when I read Reddit, I'm in awe of how good the best jokes are. The problem is that you can't have everything; with a culture of humor comes a flood of lame humor. HN's tradeoff is to optimize for signal-noise ratio, so that stuff gets hammered particularly hard. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7696013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7696013> People complain about HN's humorlessness, and they're right to a point. The trouble is that with a culture of humor comes a flood of lame humor, and HN wants to optimize for signal/noise ratio. It's not that we're killjoys—we like jokes and laughing—it's that the signal/noise problem is hard. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7503356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7503356> He's specifically pointed to a take of scott_s from 2009 several times: people usually over-estimate how funny their own comments are <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289>
mvkel 3y ago
> Post Valuable Content, or GTFO. Right, that's the vibe. And it's fantastic.
hi_dang 3y ago
[flagged]

by bmacho 3y ago

r00fus 3y ago

> HN is way the driest and most soulless. Well if you are looking for memes and catposts, yeah, the S/N ratio here is quite low. Honestly I think of those things as noise, so I see S/N of HN as much higher. I can always go elsewhere for the vibes.

markjonsona989 3y ago
My instinct was to agree with the comment above, but after giving it a few minutes I think I'd rather have a moderated "soulless" HN. It seems to me that there is a fine line between innocent jokes and full-blown juvenile behaviour. The amount of effort you would need to invest into sustaining such a place is not worth it, best to just not allow it at all. There are plenty of places where you can get your dose of jokes and fun. One thing that keeps immature and rude people away is precisely the "dullness" that the post above speaks of. People get tired and move on, leaving the place clean and tidy for others to use. HN has problems of course; downvote bullying is one of them. I'm not saying HN is perfect, but I'd rather not turn it into Reddit or Youtube. So I don't know where this leaves HN between the "pub" and "commercial street".
- soerxpso 3y ago
  I prefer it this way. I would love to see original jokes on HN, but the issue is that if you allow "jokes" in general, there's a flood of low-effort repetition of popular phrases or comments where the only "comedic" value is that they've forced something into a cliche sentence structure. That feels more soulless than the way HN is, because comments get so samey. You see the same effect sort of start to creep in on certain political posts, where people feel that they can achieve a cheap sense of attention and comradery for expressing a trite idea instead of a joke (comments that mostly amount to "Elon Musk is a mean man! Who else agrees???")
- epolanski 3y ago
  I think HN is fine as it is. I come here because it is one of the very few places where you can have interesting discussions and read interesting comments from people with a similar intent and interest.
- ahartmetz 3y ago
  The library, the café or the debate club maybe. The café was the first pub-like place where people did mostly not drink alcohol. Reportedly, it was an inportant place for the enlightenment period of history. Let's not oversell HN here, though...
  - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
    Central European cafes sell spirits, too. A cognac makes a fine accompaniment to a coffee. It is foreign franchise coffee places like Starbucks don't sell alcohol at all, and that is a major part of why they feel so foreign.
    - ahartmetz 3y ago
      They do, but the general atmosphere is far less boozy anyway. Some years ago, a friend introduced me to caffè corretto - espresso with grappa. Pretty good stuff, too.
- Gravityloss 3y ago

paganel 3y ago

There are no jokes in here, but HN definitely has a posting/comment "culture", a vibe, as the OP calls it, that's for sure. For example I could never understood how come the rationalist thing was not derided to the moon and the back, especially after that crypto debacle with the Bahamas guy. But while there was a slight reaction shorlty after the fact that rationalist mindset has returned here in full force.

logdap 3y ago

I see jokes here often enough, but they have to be tasteful, original and clever. What doesn't fly here is the lazy reddit style of joking where you just quote some lame meme or movie quip for the millionth time.

bozhark 3y ago

“catpost half drunk and high” Is the theme of our online pub

smcin 3y ago
'Miaowtual Assured Destruction'

weeblewobble 3y ago

Sometimes I feel this way and then I come across a post where dang hasn’t gotten around to blowing away the low effort joke comments. Turns out it sucks

account42 3y ago

> HN is the only place that is not a pub: jokes are frowned upon, and even moderated out. Jokes regularly get upvoted here, the bar just happens to be a bit higher than inane Reddit pun threads.

berniedurfee 3y ago

That’s the thing I appreciate _most_ about HN. The focus is on shop talk. Discuss science, tech, philosophy and other interesting topics without a constant stream of nonsense. I find it very difficult to not reply on HN with a quick joke or pun or flame with no substance, but I don’t, usually. I really like the high S/N ratio. It’s why I come here every day.

dredmorbius 3y ago

On HN jokes are possible, but they've got to be quite good, and are typically best included as seasoning to a comment rather than as freestanding comments of their own. I've done this myself, notably in my Pompeii comment of a few years ago, which was well-received (better than most of my efforts): <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22133112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22133112> Dang's written on this many times, typical: Personally, when I read Reddit, I'm in awe of how good the best jokes are. The problem is that you can't have everything; with a culture of humor comes a flood of lame humor. HN's tradeoff is to optimize for signal-noise ratio, so that stuff gets hammered particularly hard. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7696013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7696013> People complain about HN's humorlessness, and they're right to a point. The trouble is that with a culture of humor comes a flood of lame humor, and HN wants to optimize for signal/noise ratio. It's not that we're killjoys—we like jokes and laughing—it's that the signal/noise problem is hard. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7503356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7503356> He's specifically pointed to a take of scott_s from 2009 several times: people usually over-estimate how funny their own comments are <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289>

mvkel 3y ago

> Post Valuable Content, or GTFO. Right, that's the vibe. And it's fantastic.

hi_dang 3y ago

[flagged]