
Ask HN: Why no sense of humor? - quellhorst
Is it just me or is any humor on hacker news down voted right away?
======
niyazpk
Take the case of Reddit. Programming reddit used to be the place where smart
programmers used to hang around and have quality discussions about the subject
they care about the most, but the simple fact that reddit supported other
kinds of news/content in the form of subreddits made the site a place for a
lot of funny, worthless and snarky comments. Now people are more interested in
taking sides in worthless arguments (about Joel Spolsky?) than serious
productive discussions.

Remember that I am not ranting about the quality of the users of reddit, but
what I am trying to say is that reddit as a community has become bloated. Of
course reddit does have a lot of brilliant hackers as users, but the place is
not like what it used to be. I doubt that there can be serious (programming)
discussions in reddit anymore. Reddit is becoming more of a Digg than anything
else.

Meanwhile Hacker News is trying very hard to prevent the same thing happeneing
to them. It is a low-traffic news site for programmers that has very high
quality content and committed contributors. A few days ago the site was
mentioned in some social websites (including reddit) and a lot of traffic came
in, and guess what they did? Here is what Paul Graham suggested:

"We’ve had a huge spike in traffic lately, from roughly 24k daily uniques to
33k. This is a result of being mentioned on more mainstream sites. I hope this
spike will subside, like past ones have. In the meantime I may temporarily
hack a few things to make the site faster, like putting fewer results on
threads pages.

You can help the spike subside by making HN look extra boring. For the next
couple days it would be better to have posts about the innards of Erlang than
women who create sites to get hired by Twitter."

That is a very bold step to take, and worth it if you take the quality of the
content seriously.

It is not that the people using programming reddit and hacker news are
different. Even if the same person visited both the sites, he will be more
inclined to post funny remarks in reddit while he will give serious opinions
in hacker news. Not that there is something bad in being humorous, but being
too much funny is kinda annoying.

Taken from [http://www.diovo.com/2009/04/broken-windows-theory-online-
co...](http://www.diovo.com/2009/04/broken-windows-theory-online-communities/)

~~~
MaysonL
And the spate of Erlang articles which followed pg's quoted post was one of
the funniest occurrences on Hacker News, ever.

~~~
scott_s
For about ten minutes. Then it became obnoxious that it covered the front
page.

~~~
IsaacSchlueter
That's just because you don't have any sense of humor.

~~~
scott_s
I see this a lot, particularly on here: when someone doesn't find something
funny that another finds funny, they're accused of not having a sense of
humor.

I have a sense of humor. It might be different than yours, but I have one. I
also have a low tolerance for noise on HN. I don't come here for "teh funny."
I have others places I go for that. I come here for interesting, hacker
related items. I can find funny all over the internet. This is the only
reliable place I know of to find good hacker news. I'd rather not spoil that.

~~~
IsaacSchlueter
Scott, chill, it was tic. I'm sure that you have a sense of humor, but you
didn't get my joke, apparently. You see, the thread is asking why HNers have
no sense of humor, and... ah, screw it, it loses it if you have to explain it.

The erlang articles were mostly very interesting, and seeing a HN meme flare
up and go away just as quickly, especially one that is self-deprecating in
poking fun at the stereotype of the HN reader doing everything pg says, was
very fun. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it.

The only kind of noise that I really hate on HN is the "hacker news sucks"
crap. If you think it's too noisy, get better filters, or help out by flagging
the articles that violate the TOS, up-voting the articles that are good, and
ignoring the rest.

Complaining about HN in an HN comment is frankly just humorless.

~~~
Celcius
That's just because you don't have any sense of humor.

I find complaining about HN (especially the "whaa to much noise") on HN highly
ironic.

~~~
blinks
Like people continually whispering "shhh," creating more noise than there was
in the first place?

------
unalone
Humor is anathema to good discussion on sites that use voting models and
karma.

It would be a lot different if discussions were flat, or at least where
comments weren't judged on a per-comment basis. The problem is that the most
humor a voting site allows, the more the top answers get diluted. I was a
hardcore Reddit user when it started going downhill; the shift happened after
one or two puns/jokes were breakthrough huge successes. After that, everybody
tried to get the same success.

I downvote comments that are humorous but don't add to the discussion. I also
usually don't upvote _useful_ comments that are humorous. This community is
valuable because when somebody posts they're rarely being sarcastic/ironic.
You get a lot of people saying things they mean at face value. Humor's
downside is that it adds uncertainty to conversations.

------
rms
There's a much higher standard here for humor than other sites. Things that
are really, truly funny, especially while also being sublimely clever are
often modded higher than all surrounding comments.

~~~
frossie
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.

~~~
endtime
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.

~~~
dkarl
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.

------
edw519
You asked for it...

A salesman, a project manager, and a programmer are kidnapped by terrorists on
the way to a customer demo. The company refuses to pay ransom so they are to
be executed. The kidnappers grant each a last request.

The salesman said, "I have been working very hard on a Power Point
presentation of our new release and I haven't had a chance to present it yet.
It's only 143 slides and 2 hours long, and I'd like to present it before I'm
killed."

The project manager said, "I have developed a new methodology for implementing
our new release. I'd like to present 25 flip chart pages to describe it. I
will only take one hour."

The programmer said, "Kill me first."

------
patio11
I enjoy humor. I do not enjoy the 157th regurgitation of a joke, which is
meant not to be funny but to remind me of the experience of that joke once
being funny, particularly when that wastes space from my dedicated
business/programming bandwidth. See: absolutely any reference to Monty Python,
lolcats, the bastardized pieces of proto-humor commonly sometimes described as
"memes", etc.

High voted jokes also breed more of themselves. (As do highly voted comments,
on, e.g., sexually gratifying oneself. Oddly enough, people often think the
creeping pornification is a substitute for humor, too. We're pretty harsh on
those too, thank goodness.)

------
gambling8nt
Humor is not automatically downvoted. One-liners that add nothing to a
discussion are.

Humor can be used to great effect in order to make a point--but, more often
than not, it represents much less of an increase in signal and much more of an
increase in noise.

------
quoderat
I've wondered about that as well -- and it is strange to me. Hackers are
widely-known for their impish pranks. And even when humor is used in the
service of a point, that comment is usually voted down.

I know we don't want the place to turn into Reddit or, worse, Digg, but a
little humor actually improves my thought processes and analytical skills.

But every community has its culture. HN is no exception.

To further explore it, in my experience of 15 years in the tech industry or
its outskirts, I think a small but vocal minority of tech types are humor-
impaired, and that often has an over-large impact on any tech-oriented site.

But who knows? I'm just spouting off ideas.

------
knightinblue
Humor is great, except for when it gets upvoted more than actually
constructive comments.

For that, I go to reddit. When I feel even _more_ impish, I hit digg.

Basically, there's a place for humor and there's a place for constructive
dialogue. You'd think the two would go hand in hand, but a voting system like
HN proves that it's a tough thing to do.

~~~
unalone
_Basically, there's a place for humor and there's a place for constructive
dialogue. You'd think the two would go hand in hand, but a voting system like
HN proves that it's a tough thing to do._

Here's how it works. Give people a soapbox, a place for them to develop their
own writing styles and personalities, and humor and pathos tend to develop. I
see it in every blog that I read and like: every voice is different and unique
because they're able to experiment and develop themselves, and then they get
an audience.

On Hacker News, users are depersonalized. That is to say, Hacker News is about
the community as a whole rather than as unalone or knightinblue. Our
contributions are valued, but only as long as we're being a part of the
community. Say you're having problems with an ex-wife. Say I've been learning
how to play basketball. These things may be a big part of our lives, but they
don't have a place in Hacker News. So we leave a part of ourselves at the door
when we post here. In reward, we have a community that has thus far managed
not to turn petty and immature, where you can discuss things with a lot of
people without there being memorable characters and personalities distracting
from the conversation.

In fact, the people whose names I _do_ know tend to be ones I wish I didn't
know. Certain people stand out to be because they _do_ use HN in a way outside
the norm. Some people I remember for being over-the-top sarcastic and
scathing. Some people use Hacker News like a soapbox, an attention-getter
space. I'm sure that in some ways, my own habit of writing lengthy posts
stands out and irritates some people, because I'll often go into more detail
than seems warranted with an initial post.

So the emphasis in what you said is _dialogue_. When an individual is
speaking, personality becomes a big thing. But in a productive conversation,
personality becomes a deterrent that distracts from the important details.

------
kyro
Are you kidding? Many of the comments I've made have been marginally witty,
and shot me up into karma stardom.

------
scott_s
People are rarely as funny as they think they are.

------
christofd
I gotta say... the mindset of many on here seems to be: quickly find a flaw
that I can knock down. People on here are usually confrontational in their
approach, e.g. humor gets attacked. The tone on here seems to be rather grumpy
(but I'm more used to the academic world). I don't like fluff-talk, but I also
dislike easy criticism and literal-mindedness. However, HN is currently the
only game in town.

~~~
gambling8nt
It may seem that way, but that has more to do with the fact that agreement is
not inherently comment worthy, since it does not do anything to further the
discussion (note that expansion of an existing argument is comment worthy, but
significantly rarer). Instead, the first responses to something have to show
disagreement in order to establish an alternative viewpoint, through which
there can be discussion.

~~~
christofd
Exactly: expansion of an existing argument is comment-worthy, but
significantly rarer.

I'm missing a coherent discussion, instead I'm often stuck in a game of block
& attack. One young hacker wants to show the other young hacker that he is
superior. Personally, I find this is just noise... I seek comprehension.

~~~
gambling8nt
Coherent discussion IS a sequence of block and attack--thesis and antithesis--
ideally (although rarely in practice) ending in some kind of resolution
(synthesis). Comprehension without disagreement does not necessitate
discussion or further remark; the best sign that you've written something of
value that others have comprehended is when a comment is voted up without
replies (the upvotes indicate value, and the lack of reply indicates
agreement). Any other system would result in the overwhelming additional noise
of a cacophony of "I agree"s with possible small variations.

~~~
christofd
In practice there aren't any totally novel ideas. So, if you gotta start every
discussion from scratch with block & attack it gets tedious. How would a jazz
musician be able to jam with new guys if they don't agree on something? I
guess if hackers were Jazz musicians, the audience would hear short staccato
outbursts mixed with gaps of silence.

And then there is the difference between an elegant attack, which you can
learn from, or the usual trying to misinterpret a statement in their favor,
which is called framing.

~~~
gambling8nt
Continuing your musical analogy, a "discussion" without disagreement would be
like a musical piece in which every instrument played precisely the same notes
and every singer sang precisely the same words at the same time. In such a
circumstance, the presence of additional people is largely irrelevant.

A sequence of arguments going back and forth between two people, on the other
hand, are essentially the back and forth of a duet playing separate themes
(that, ideally, mix at the end). While certain sorts of arguments are non- or
counter-productive (analogous to internally discordant themes), the
possibility of such things occurring does not imply that this mode is not
superior to single-view discourse.

The fact that discussions center on points of disagreement is not an accident,
and does not imply that there is not agreement regarding most things.
Disagreements are simply the portion of a topic around which someone believes
that there is more information that an outside observer should consider when
formulating their beliefs, whereas when there is agreement no further
information is necessary, so there is no value in transmitting more signal.

------
DanielBMarkham
The long answer involves a lot of talk about how it degrades the site.

The short answer is that since people, last I checked, were animals who joked,
and computers were made for people, not the other way around, the site should
support joking and flag/hide jokes appropriately depending on user
preferences.

I'm okay with it either way. I don't think of the humorless nature of HN as
being some huge asset. In fact, it makes the place stuffy and overly earnest.
Dare I say artificially boring. But I understand the reasoning behind the
community's standards. I just think like everything else there is a proper mix
in life. Finding the right mix for a social site seems to be a critical
factor.

By the way, humor doesn't completely go away. People still sneak it in here or
there. You're just forced to follow it with something of value to the
conversation. This eliminates the hit-and-run snarky one-liners found on so
many other sites.

------
adrianwaj
You are spot on, there's little humour and Slashdot is way funnier.

I always upvote something that is funny: maybe here funny isn't smart, which
is wrong, or, funny is smart, which can easily be the case, but smart people
who aren't funny don't want to acknowledge that others are funny.

Maybe "humour" is upvoted but "funny" is not because it's weird and
uncommunal. So humour is often not appreciated because it gets too easily
percieved as funny amongst the ultra-seriousness.

Maybe being in serious concentration, which gains the upvotes, people forget
about their funny side in both reading and writing.

~~~
scott_s
Slashdot is filled with people _trying_ to be funny. To the point that it
dominates a thread, and drowns out real discussion. I hope we can avoid that
here.

~~~
adrianwaj
Right, but there are some seriously funny comments.

~~~
scott_s
And they are completely drowned out by the seriously _unfunny_ comments. As is
actual discourse. That's one of the reasons I gave up on Slashdot.

~~~
adrianwaj
Standard Slashdot has a mod-filter set high and you'll get both very smart and
very funny comments. The aggregate intelligence is actually higher on Slashdot
because there's more users, but it's hard to engage in that community properly
without having to plow through the tripe.

If there was a mod-filter here, or an upvote/downvote categorizer like there
is at Slashdot, things would change. The direct payoff of humour is pleasure,
with insight being of a different quality. There's more variety at Slashdot,
and people can be more of themselves, for better and worse, and the modding
style and layout promotes that diversity. Here, people downmod anything that
doesn't add value to the discussion (or strongly opposes one's point-of-view)
because you have to look at it, but on Slashdot, participation has it's own
inherent value because of the filter.

Furthermore, if people here were identified by their real names, can you
imagine how straight-jacketed most would feel, not wanting to be perceived as
weird or 'funny' at any point?

Just takin' a stab.

------
pg
Most, but not all. Most attempts at humor in online forums are lame, so this
is what you'd expect to find on a forum where lame comments were frowned upon.

I'm not saying voters' judgement of what's funny is perfect, but it's not too
far off. I occasionally see a comment that seems funny that got voted down,
but these are greatly outnumbered by ones that weren't that funny.

------
donaq
Personally, where humorous posts are concerned, I upvote those that also have
content (regardless of whether it is actually funny), leave alone those that
are funny without content, and downvote those that do not have content and
aren't funny. Sometimes, though rarely, I also upvote posts not relevant to
the topic but which I find hilariously funny/clever, because a good joke is a
hack all by itself.

------
jodrellblank
"The most important thing is that the comments are kept useful by constant
vigilance on the part of the community. Did anyone see the reddit t-shirt
thread yesterday? That sort of thing needs to remain unthinkable here. Not
just the sophomoric sexualization and laughter-excuses-any-misconduct, but the
parts of Internet culture which aren't relevant to programming/business/etc.
(I like lolcats, anime, and politics myself -- just not here.)" - Patio11,
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=555595>

------
davidw
That's a tricky one isn't it? I think the same things that make for smart and
creative give one a good sense of humor, but you have to actively self-censor
yourself to make sure you're really limiting yourself to things you really
find funny and not just 'hah hah'. Of course, tastes differ too.

------
rodrigo
Well, it mostly is; But the humor that gets upvoted its VERY funny, so, im ok
with that high threshold. I keep coming here because of the signal/noise ratio
wich has not changed that much in my more than 562 days here, wich in internet
time its a lot of time. So, this is a truly valuable place.

------
Aron
If you find something that can fly and it has feathers, while everything else
that can't fly does not have feathers, then you should give feathers slightly
more plausibility as the causal reason for flight.

------
jimfl
I have noticed this as well, and not just the time I got downmodded for
responding "XSLT" on a thread asking what folks thought were the most
"tranformational" programming languages.

------
njharman
It was at +5 before linking to it here
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=564827>

That is an example of humor that didn't get nuked to hell.

It's also, I humbly put forth, an example of making an counter argument,
making a separate point and not being mind-numbingly boring about it.

HN, humor is not death. You can laugh a little and still have time to believe
you're smarter and better than the rest of us.

------
phil_collins
Because nobody here has one.

~~~
buugs
This probably wouldn't be downmodded so much if people were less defensive
when they were reading comments.

~~~
knightinblue
Agreed. I see no reason to downvote that comment so strongly. People really
need to lighten up.

~~~
gojomo
Even in jest, it's a simple-minded reflexive insult. Downvotes are a
legitimate way to say we want less of that.

~~~
varjag
Or to prove the poster's point.

It's not like your choice is either upvote or downvote, you can just leave it
alone.

------
wooster
Oh yeah? Your mom.

~~~
wooster
Yup, you were right, no sense of humor.

------
njharman
Hacker News is for entrepreneurs making money. It is _serious_ business, not a
place for fun.

