4 ms·

Please don't post substanceless one-liners here. i.e. don't make jokes. I've wondered about this because I've done the same thing and gotten downvoted. There'

by riggins 12y ago

Please don't post substanceless one-liners here. i.e. don't make jokes. I've wondered about this because I've done the same thing and gotten downvoted. There's nothing about not making jokes in the guidelines. Personally I like a little humor mixed with my HN. Is there some unspoken guideline that HN is supposed to be humorless? And on a semi-serious note, isn't mildly interesting that one of the most common cultural myths (vampires) may have some scientific validity?

dang 12y ago
scott_s made an insightful comment about this recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289. HN isn't against humor per se. 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 tends to get hammered. There are other places to get lots of internet humor. HN is never going to be one of those, not because people don't like to laugh, but because the signal/noise problem is hard.
- Retric 12y ago
  I do occasionally up vote posts that I find funny. I just down vote several times that. The real issue is HN has an older audience which does not find obvious one liners interesting.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- danieltillett 12y ago
  Sometimes a really clever one-can contain an amazing amount of information (laconic humour is a good example of this[0]). The signal-to-noise ratio can be very high here. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconic_phrase http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconic_phrase
jfoster 12y ago
Would it be that bad if one of the best places for intelligent tech discussion online didn't include humour? There's an abundance of humour everywhere else.
scelerat 12y ago
> isn't mildly interesting that one of the most common cultural myths (vampires) may have some scientific validity? That's really all I was commenting on. I could have spelled it out like you did, but clearly my tone was not to some people's liking.

by riggins 12y ago

dang 12y ago

scott_s made an insightful comment about this recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289. HN isn't against humor per se. 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 tends to get hammered. There are other places to get lots of internet humor. HN is never going to be one of those, not because people don't like to laugh, but because the signal/noise problem is hard.

Retric 12y ago
I do occasionally up vote posts that I find funny. I just down vote several times that. The real issue is HN has an older audience which does not find obvious one liners interesting.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
danieltillett 12y ago
Sometimes a really clever one-can contain an amazing amount of information (laconic humour is a good example of this[0]). The signal-to-noise ratio can be very high here. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconic_phrase http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconic_phrase

jfoster 12y ago

Would it be that bad if one of the best places for intelligent tech discussion online didn't include humour? There's an abundance of humour everywhere else.

scelerat 12y ago

> isn't mildly interesting that one of the most common cultural myths (vampires) may have some scientific validity? That's really all I was commenting on. I could have spelled it out like you did, but clearly my tone was not to some people's liking.