

Ask HN: What is the role of jokes in Hacker News comments? - tokenadult

I'm wondering what the community consensus is around joking comments here on Hacker News. I used HN search to look up some previous comments on the issue that appeared in earlier threads, some as recent as yesterday. What do you think? Are we looking for jokes here on HN? Or is the community looking for something else from comments? Is it a matter of distinguishing insightful or deep jokes from lame or thoughtless jokes? What do you think? I'd appreciate your thoughts on this issue.
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pg
The best sort of jokes are those that are (a) funny and (b) implicit in some
substantive comment.

Unfortunately most jokes here, as on most forums, fail on both counts. The
most common way to fail (a) seems to be to recycle overused catch phrases in
insufficiently novel ways.

~~~
tokenadult
Thanks for the reply. I was wondering, because of a rather bizarre comment I
saw (and replied to) earlier today. I thought the most charitable
interpretation of the comment was that it was an attempt at a joke.

~~~
orangethirty
There many jokes here, though they are disguised inside serious comments. My
take is that you should humor to make a point, and not as the point itself.

Good:

A joke that is relative to the subject. As in replying with code one liners
when another member posts one. This one is quite enjoyable.

Bad:

One liners like _"That's what she said!"._

Though I think a thread about hacker jokes could come in handy from time to
time. We are quite the uptight community.

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corysama
Jokes on HN are strongly discouraged. As much as people like them, their
presence creates a feedback loop that drives the noise-to-signal ratio through
the roof. Jokes can be made, understood and voted up very quickly. In a
democratic situation like HN, this leads to a large volume of replies and up
votes that quickly drowns out all relevant conversation. The more threads that
feature jokes, the harder it becomes to discourage them in the future. It
seems the fate of all vote-based forums to eventually devolve into a sea of
memes (HN -> Reddit -> Digg). HN's anti-humor downvote brigade gets a lot of
pushback, but they are so harsh because they are doing their best to hold back
that tide.

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davidkellis
If I want jokes, I go to reddit. I think, for the most part, they don't belong
here.

~~~
ScottWhigham
This sort of comment highlights the problem of not showing comment scores. I
agree with David, so I upvote him. However, no one knows that I agreed with
David unless I specifically comment with a "+1" or something else (such as
this comment). The way it is now, only those who understand the inner workings
of the site's comment showing algo know that, because David's comment is (at
the time of this writing) the top comment, that means that either (a) David's
comment has been upvoted the most, or (b) David has a high karma, or (c) etc,
etc. I wish I could just see a (46) next to David's comment - that would
validate my agreement with David moreso than just "Here - have an upvote".

~~~
rdwallis
Your comment highlights exactly why comment scores should not be shown.

If you use comment scores as a proxy for agree/disagree you are much more
likely to downvote comments you don't agree with even if they add to the
discussion.

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minopret
Merely humorous comments detract from the true comedic function of Hacker
News, to satirize Reddit. I'm kidding?! As to the community, it seems to
support our gracious host's objection, not to jokes as such, but to jokes
based in meanness or stupidity and to the ease with which such jokes
proliferate. Here is a post that quotes this objection specifically:
[http://www.kottke.org/09/02/the-fluff-principle-and-other-
th...](http://www.kottke.org/09/02/the-fluff-principle-and-other-thoughts-on-
community)

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gregcohn
Most comments that don't add substantively to the discussion seem to generate
downvotes. Which is too bad, as I like the funny.

That said, it seems like it would be hard to control for only occasional (and
ideally funny) jokes in a community like this -- if jokes were generally
rewarded, hn could become a jokefest like Reddit, dramatically reducing the
signal-to-noise ration many of us appreciate it for.

TL;DR - use jokes sparingly, and make 'em good.

(edited for a typo)

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codegeek
I posted a funny even though to the point response to an interesting comment
here. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5203967>. It got 20 upvotes. So I
would say it could work

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runawaybottle
Jokes are the reason reddit comments deterioted so quickly.

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laneshill
beep boop boop boop i am a programmer and i am a robot boop boop beep boop

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lifeisstillgood
To get to the other side.

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gadders
They make the aspies nervous

