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I've been wondering why humorous comments are so rare on HN, and this one just got downvoted. Is there a rule that comments should be serious? Anyway this was

• samdk 14y ago
  I think that many people post jokes here because on other similar sites they're an easy way to get (often quite a lot of) upvotes, and a lot of us here dislike that mentality. My criteria for upvoting a joke are generally the same as my criteria for upvoting any other comment: if I feel it adds something to the discussion, it gets an upvote. If I feel like it contributes nothing at all, it gets a downvote, because reading it is a waste of someone's time. Most of the jokes posted here are surface humor. They are relatively obvious and add nothing to the discussion, and so I downvote quite a lot of them. Occasionally someone will use humor to make a good point, and then I will upvote them. In general I'd discourage it, though--it's usually much easier and clearer to just say what you mean, and people here are usually receptive to well-argued points.
  • deleted 14y ago
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• lmm 14y ago
  There's a post from pg that I wish I could find where he says something along the lines of "the greatest enemy of intelligent discussion is not the outright troll but the witty one-liner". There's no rule against humour that I know of, but there is a culture that believes it's often detrimental to the discussion.
• davidw 14y ago
  Because it's not funny - it's just a silly, hyperbolic meme. I've had funny comments upvoted (and a few I thought were funny downvoted, but c'est la vie). ( I always liked this one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=458155 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=458155 )