Admin abuse is inherently funny. It's like slapstick. It was funny on SA when the users paid to sign up in the first place, and it can only be more so when they're not even paying customers.

Should've made it a wordfilter though. Those are more participatory.

(You won't take this advice, which is why I've run a large popular internet forum before and you haven't.)

I completely agree, when he did that is was pretty funny (but a little pathetic he didn't dare to ban these users or this sub, either for money or political reasons).

Users reacted poorly and "shocked" site wide somehow that an admin could exerts admin right and edit database which as a sysadmin made me laugh a lot because I get occasional similar ones from our users when we do admin stuff.

"funny but a little pathetic" fits a lot of Lowtax shenanigans very well, so it seems reasonable.

> Admin abuse is inherently funny

I think you're a very small minority in that opinion, my friend. Perhaps leadership decisions like that are why you refer to your forum in the past tense now?

You will never be able to perfectly tickle everyone's funny bone with a given joke, but most everyone agrees that the role of forums is to offer a funny experience, and a good admin will play a significant role in making that happen. One does not spend their preciously scarce free time on an Internet forum if there is nothing funny about it.

I don't usually go on forums to look for funny things. I'm there because people talk about things I'm interested in.

> One does not spend their preciously scarce free time on an Internet forum if there is nothing funny about it.

By your own metrics, HN is often a failure and you should not (or do not) spend time here.

In what way is HN failing? HN is an excellent source of humour. Even this very comment I am replying to contains a fair amount of hilarity.

Sorry, I must have misunderstood your definition of hilarity. There was a lot of discussion elsewhere about a specific type of humor. The trolling/random kind of humor.

There's nothing past tense about it, but sometimes you change jobs, you know.