I haven’t visited /. for years so maybe out of date, but IIRC this was largely helped by separating voting from type - so even if a comment gets a lot of upvotes for being funny, my personal settings of “ignore funny comments” means I still get a decently high-quality signal, which is something I’ve not seen anywhere else

I know why people don't like them and I get that you are correct that it got pretty absurd on /. around the time period you mentioned.

But I miss the jokes sometimes. I have to resist the urge to reference Rob Malda when I'm reading HN occasionally.

Good the main issue with jokes is they're the text equivalent of a Meme pic or "look what I did" type post. Easy to consume content with little actual meat. They attract upvotes easily when accepted because of that lack of substance.

Without a culture that rejects them, they, by nature, rapidly overwhelm most communities in content if a voting system is present.

No way, that guy is the best.

> hn down votes jokes so aggressively

"if you insist on taking up my class time making jokes, please see to it that they are funny."