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Comment by 7UenehWG | Hacker News Reader

It's not humor-policing to point out that HN has a different culture and comments serve a different purpose here. I like pun threads - but I go to /r/jokes when I want them. Here, I expect a certain sort of signal - insight from experienced and intelligent people working hard on interesting technical problems.

This isn't to say that humor should be verboten, or pun threads strictly banned - but they're definitely not what HN has been about historically, and arguably should not be encouraged if we want HN to continue serving whatever role it serves. There are more places like /r/jokes than HN on the net, after all.

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I don't want to be petty... but your comment would have a lot more weight if you made it with your primary account.

That said, I agree with all your points... but we're humans... Even if most of our time is spent on science, we still get amused by the most silly of things; and if those things help support LetsEncrypt... Hurrah!

I'm assuming they don't have a primary, or they rather avoid the downvotes that people give without actually giving any actual feedback.

It's one thing to have rules, but don't confuse rule following with culture. Culture is emergent, and not something that is policed into place.

HN has a culture of pointing out that obvious, boring jokes have no place here. There's a constant struggle by people to introduce them, but (amongst others) those of us who watched Slashdot flush itself down the toilet of shitty humor are going to police the site because it's what we want.

Isn't it fair to say that the field of computer science has (up until recently, apparently) distinguished itself with its corny humor, dorkiness, and resulting sense of humility? I feel like puns and bad jokes had generally been a special part of the culture of early technologists. It's a little sad to see that give way to a kind of self-important seriousness.

But this isn't the field of computer science, it's HN. HN has developed its own distinct culture, as any long-running online forum does.

Don't be sad. The one context doesn't really apply to the other because these communities are so different in size and cohesion.

It isn't a question of humor, but of stock humor, which grows like crabgrass on the internet and quickly takes over. I think scott_s got it right years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289. Humor that clears the signal/noise threshold does fine here.

Fair enough. Thanks for the input, dang.

That's fine. I disagree with that policy and this is my way of expressing it.

> Here, I expect a certain sort of signal - insight from experienced and intelligent people working hard on interesting technical problems.

In a comment thread about somebody donating? You must be disappointed often.

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