4 ms·
Humor is welcome on HN, but attempts at humor are not. It's just that HN has a higher standard of what is actually funny. Some recent examples: http://news.yc
by sofal 17y ago
Humor is welcome on HN, but attempts at humor are not. It's just that HN has a higher standard of what is actually funny.
Some recent examples:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=976321 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=976321
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=978683 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=978683
I've found that humor is always acceptable in any community, but the standards and flavor can vary wildly. Unless you feel that you really have a good handle on what the community thinks is funny, it's best to avoid trying. I'm convinced that discouraging attempts at humor that are not funny is for the best in any online community. Humor should be used sparingly and skillfully.
- RevRal 17y agoThis is just plain hard for me to gauge, but thanks for your reply as well. I know what you mean by saying that attempts at humor are not welcome here. I'll see a comment that I think is pretty witty, but it has maybe 0, or less, points. I click the user, and it turns out they're respectable. I've gotten a couple pretty well received comments in, and a few failures. So the whole point of my original comment was to eliminate an easy platform for humor. I mean, it is pretty easy to make fun of a bad submission and I've seen a few respectable users do it. So I did it myself a couple times and had fun. But I wasn't sure if that was okay -- in the grander scheme of the community, detrimental -- which is why I asked here if it was a big deal.