
Ask HN: Why doesn't HN like one liners? - 1arity
Humour is proven to help you think more flexibly and creatively. Encouraging people to have a sense of humour and rewarding that frees their minds to think of more productive things, which in turn may create better quality content. A lot of workplaces use regular &quot;games&quot; to relieve tension, relax and change the &quot;thinking mode&quot; into something more playful. I completely agree with HN&#x27;s stance on abuse, harassment, hate speech and negativity and am puzzled by its intolerance of oneliners and seeming lack of humour as a motif across even a small number of submissions. Given this, it&#x27;s fair to ask, Why so serious, HN?
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seren
Fundamentally it is to have a good signal to noise ratio, in the name of
efficiency.

I'd rather read/parse quickly 50 insightful comments, that 300 where most of
them are jokes, puns, etc.

Sure more jokes would likely give a more friendly or relaxed atmosphere, but
there are already so many of these informative not-too-serious-but-fun-to-read
communities, that I am grateful to have at least one place where I know the
comment quality and information density is quite high.

~~~
1arity
Has the experiment been tried ?

6:1 seems too high. If that were what downvotes were currently suppressing, I
feel we'd see a lot more illegal humorists slipping through this border
control.

Are downvotes really that effective a filter ? For instance, if HN downvotes
don't stop the haters ( under even the extreme assumption that, on the
internet, there are 10 haters to every 1 netizen ), I don't think they're
stopping the X times as many humorists ( or "Humorous Comment Events" ).

Which means that perhaps the noise ratio would not be so blown out by humour
as is expected.

In terms of what the ideal humour ratio should be, I think something like
1:0.1 or 1:0.2 at max would be optimal. A smattering of humour.

~~~
jasonkester
Yes. Extensively.

The entire rest of the Internet can be considered the control group, if you
like. Everywhere else allows silly one line puns to stand unswatted. And it is
unbearable. Enough so that you and I are here instead.

QED.

------
skylark
I disagree that HN doesn't like humor. Compare the comments of this article
posted yesterday on HN vs. Reddit (the one where the guy teaches his daughter
CSS and has to vertically align something).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9993171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9993171)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/3fkkh0/teaching_css_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/3fkkh0/teaching_css_hilarious_short_blog_post/)

It's not like the HN crowd is completely stiff. But look at the ridiculous
difference in post quality. Reddit is almost 100% one-liners with no substance
whereas Hacker News managed to find some interesting things to discuss.

In simple upvote/downvote systems, content will always proceed towards the
lowest common denominator. The moment it becomes culturally acceptable to post
something low effort and obvious is the moment a high quality community dies.

------
qohen
The 950+ results returned from searching HN for the term [0] would suggest
that, contrary to your thesis, Hacker News readers do, in fact, appreciate one
liners quite a bit -- just take a look at these examples:

\- _Also, awk has a fun way of parsing input, which makes for very enjoyable
one liners_ [1]

\- _In Vim, configuration is a bunch of one-liners and I love that._ [2]

(As for your other point, however, i.e. whether HN readers appreciate humorous
comments, sadly, I'm not sure how we could go about determining that...)

[0]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+"one+liners")

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8894231](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8894231)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7303266](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7303266)

------
CatsoCatsoCatso
They get tiresome very quickly. I recently sat and read a Reddit/r/History
discussion on Pirate-ship Democracies, the continual (and all very similar)
puns & jokes about pirates littered between the interesting points got really,
really annoying very fast.

In person, if you're having a discussion and someone cracks a good pun it's
fine, but when you're on the internet 100+ people make the same pun, then it's
really not fine, it's boring.

~~~
1arity
That might happen on HN, and then again, HN isn't reddit.

I suppose I am also curious that, if the experiment of allowing humour has not
been tried, where did the idea to disallow humour come from ?

~~~
CatsoCatsoCatso
I haven't been here long enough to say when, where or why it came about. I
imagine there's a fear that allowing humour will lead to this place being like
Reddit (ie. swamped with more jokes than quality responses).

The one-liners I've seen people deliver here (and get downvoted for) haven't
ever really been worth the read. It might only be a single comment, but
reading it wastes time, copy that by a few more & you'll get sick of jokes
fast. This is personally why I try and avoid Reddit, trying to follow a
conversation is frustrating when every 3rd post is a witty comment with no
substance but the pun.

------
brudgers
_A lot of workplaces use regular "games"_

Spolosky talks about this quite a bit in the StackOverflow/StackExchange
podcasts in relation to online communities. The podcasts have been recorded
from the beginning as StackOverflow was built.

The problem with regular jokes in online communities:

\+ They separate the insiders from the outsiders

\+ They become a focus of online activity for regular users in lieu of the
public organizing principle.

StackOverflow is useful for solving problems precisely because meme-making and
joke cracking is not allowed to be anyone's _primary_ activity. The same holds
true on HN, nobody is popular just because they are funny. It's not that HN
doesn't like humor so much as it favors cleverness, knowledge, and insight;
and most attempts at humor lack all three.

If it takes Seinfeld years to get a joke pitch perfect, what are the average
HN'ers odds of doing so in 74 keystrokes? I find that the delete link is
really useful whenever I succumb to the urge.

Good luck.

------
staunch
HN likes _good_ one liners. Where good is defined as being so funny or
insightful that you can't not laugh. A pretty high bar to meet, but it keeps
the noise down. There have been a number of great one liners over the years.

~~~
1arity
Please post a few examples. I'm really thirsty to see some humour on here, and
get a sense of it.

~~~
staunch
I don't know any easy way to search for one liners.

Not really a joke but it's the best example of funny-on-HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079)

------
syllogism
I appreciate the no-humour approach in HN greatly. Almost every other forum is
full of people trying to be funny. This basically infects the culture of the
forum, and crowds out most other kinds of conversation.

I find the types of jokes people are likely to make about technology, or about
interesting/engaging articles, very tedious. I also think a lot of the jokes
are simply cynical.

I would much rather read comments that are earnest, than comments that were
flippant.

------
haack
Because one liners are never funny, especially when they're ironic.

