Ask HN: Why no sense of humor?

Re:Ask HN: Why no sense of humor? by frossie on Thursday April 23, 2009 @01:27AM (#575158)

As a recent arrival who has been trying to figure out what the community standard is, I have been paying close attention to this question. In line with rms's comment, no, I don't think humour gets downvoted per se. Cheap shots definitely are, which covers a lot of sarcasm, as are quips with no additional content and general rudeness. What I would say is that comments which lack content get punished even more when attempting (either successfully or not) to get a laugh.

I certainly don't think there is anything wrong with having a forum where every line doesn't play to the peanut gallery.

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Re:Ask HN: Why no sense of humor? by endtime on Thursday April 23, 2009 @01:50AM (#575183)

I think you're on the right track. In my experience, funny is not downvoted for funny's sake. However, there's a strong correlation between funny comments and short/low quality/insubstantial comments, and the latter will get downvoted.

If you want to be funny, be interesting at the same time. If you can't, then save the joke for reddit.

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Re:Ask HN: Why no sense of humor? by dkarl on Thursday April 23, 2009 @02:42AM (#575218)

I think there's a bias against funny and amusing comments, and I think it's appropriate. The internet is an inexhaustible source of mildly amusing, even fairly funny stuff. There's a limited amount of room on the HN front page, and it shouldn't be wasted on humor of the quality that can be found in vast quantities all over the internet.

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