I can't think of too many things less hacker-like than "today we try very hard to be funny in a really formulaic way because that's what everybody else does".
I agree that there is such a thing as a lame, formulaic April Fool's story. So, let's raise the bar. Only upvote April Fool's stories that have an interesting twist to them. Don't upvote lame April Fool's submissions.
Speak for yourself. Clearly many people do find the jokes worthwhile or amusing, otherwise they wouldn't be voting for them. If you do not, then that's fine, but I don't see why this difference transcends the HN voting system more than any other.
I can understand how some might feel this is turning HN into reddit, but have a little faith - it's only for one day.
If somebody actually pulls off a great MIT-style April Fool's hack, then a news story talking about it or an explanation of how they did it would be a great submission.
But there's nothing hack-like about unfunny people trying their hand at being The Onion. If that sort of story belong on HN, then I suggest that we also start voting up LOL cats since they use the clever hack of overlaying macro text on top of an image file.
If only they came with labels. Unfortunately, the hallmark of a web-based April Fool story is that it comes clothed as a real story. They're deliberately crafted to sucker you in and convince you to read two to six paragraphs before you figure out that they're made of lies.
In other words, April Fool's Day is a linkbait competition. I think that's why it has worn out its welcome for so many people. Linkbait used to be more funny when it was rare. Now it's like celebrating Mosquito Day, or Spam Email Day.
Yours would be a reasonable suggestion if every April Fool story was submitted with a prominent label reading [APRIL FOOL]. But that would spoil the fun, wouldn't it? If there's anything less fun than an April Fool story, it's an inartful April Fool story.
Frankly I think Google raised the bar years ago when they announced Gmail on April 1. I no longer think an April Fool story is any good unless it (a) sounds like an obvious April Fool joke but (b) is 100% true.
No. You are making the site worse. When someone asks you to stop you say, “Lighten up! You'll live. It's only 24 hours.”
This dodges the core issue: most people don't want that bullshit here. If you want that bullshit, there are many other news sites that will cater to your need for bullshit.
Indeed. I keep thinking: if only there were some distributed way to determine which stories people thought should be voted up and which they thought should be voted down...
Not all of them need labels. For example: Google Acquires the Internal Revenue Service.
This is all recreational. But it sometimes also gives you perspective. Makes you think in a different way. That can't be bad.
Besides, those who are really bothered by the jokes and are that dependent on HN that they cannot live without it for a day seem to have a different problem.
Also, please flag anything you don't consider hacker news. The mods will do the rest. We won't be offended if an article we like is killed. If there are so many that the mods are offended, I'm sure they'll let us know.
I could see this coming a mile a way.. Are April Fools stories something so unbearable for one day a year? I think a number of people find these things interesting, creative, and possibly even funny.. Not sure if the fact don't enjoy them constitutes policy.
April Fools' stories are like lolcats. If you saw one of them for every fifty or so sites you visited they'd be kinda cute; if you see them ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE they're just really stupid spam. Also, most of them are a lot less funny than the originator believes; it's almost as if there were an annual blonde joke festival.
I think it would be nice if there was ONE aggregator without any April Fools' crap on it. If you want April Fools' stories you do know where to find them.
Personally I find April 1 to be one of my most productive days of the year. It's the one day I tend to stay away from tech-news sites since I cannot trust that the news is genuine.
It's only a happy coincidence that I even noticed this thread as I was switching to the "no news" version of my iGoogle page.
Enjoy your prank day guys (seriously. Have fun). I'll give it a few days for the joke stories to fall off the front pages of HN, /., etc.
We could look at this in a different way. I created a new Ask HN to allow for people to link to their favorite April Fools joke. This should help control the April Fools joke submissions and still allow people to express their joy of being fooled.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
I don't see anything in there about not wasting everybody's time!
Given that the ones posted here are often programmer-related (ie, the UniXKCD), why not? Far more inane and less-geek-related things are posted year-round, and at higher rates, and they get attention too. I'm not saying this is good or bad for HN, but they're clearly interesting to the inhabitants, so there's definitely a valid argument that that's what's best. And arguments against. Bah, whatever.
I, however, wouldn't oppose a "[A1]" (or similar) tag prefixing April Fool's threads, and would happily modify my lonely submission if people would prefer.
I've found that the most consistent and prevalent thing about HN on April Fools' Day is the whining about April Fools' Day. It's like a rehearsed puppet show.
Just flagged this. Meta-meta discussions and talking about HN way? not to up vote April Fools related stories, and then get in to arguments about it? Not definitely worth it.
I find it interesting that so many of the comments here are pro April Fools stories and yet on the site as a whole April Fools stories seem to be quickly flagged and killed.
Is this one of them? An April Fools item about April Fools items? I think the Y combinator (the mathematical abstraction, not the company) just became sentient and is recursing all over the place.
Oh fuck. Omega's here. (\x. x x) (\x. x x). (I advise you not to evaluate it.) I never should have mocked that mockingbird.
