zlacker

>>tonmoy+(OP)
Here or elsewhere I’ve long followed these rules for commenting:

1. Be respectful.

2. Stay on topic.

3. Move the conversation forward. This sounds like a repetition of #2 but there is often a distinction in that, say, a discussion about a new product feature is likely not the time to discuss the company’s history with features. Going in that direction is moving the conversation sideways.

4. Provide supporting evidence for what is said. Claiming something like, “I’d never buy this from Company X” is a baseless statement compared to “I’d never buy this from Company X because A, B, and C are an indication I won’t get much support beyond the 90-day warranty and that’s not enough at that price point.” The trick I use for this is to include a word like because since it compels an explanation.

5. Avoid attempts at humor. For one, text mediums like HN can easily lead to misinterpretations; there are many people reading for whom English is a second language, so being clever can cause confusion for those readers; if my humor were so good to be worthwhile for the amount of readers a place like HN has then I should be a comedian. I'm not a comedian.

>>NaOH+bw
My most upvoted comment on HN by a mile was a joke about Siri. A lot of my other most upvoted comments are either jokes or humorous exaggerations or other silly stuff.

The guidelines may say that humor should be avoided, but the readership (the people who, in the end, decide what HN is) seems to disagree.

>>Uehrek+BA
I will take humor or even cheesy jokes over some of the condescending, egotistic, and patronizing comments in here any day any time. Obviously all in moderation, but listing humor as a bad thing in general gives an you idea the type of person/company/etc. is, taking life too seriously is not a healthy thing, not for you, not for everyone around you.

>>tamimi+YO
Personally I'd be fine if the humor and the condescending, egotistic, patronizing comments all went away.

I don't think humor in general is a bad thing (my friends would likely in part describe me as a wise-cracking, sarcastic jokester at times), but I just don't think HN -- or any sort of textual medium where participants don't know each other that well or at all -- is a great place for it.

Obviously we're all free to disagree on this (and we obviously are, given the size of this subthread), but I think overall the community agrees (through up/downvoting) that humor on HN should be fairly rare.

>>kelnos+lX
It might be, but a light hearted joke shouldn’t be looked at as a bad/offensive behavior, if you don’t like it, ignore it, someone else might like it, we are not the same, something for you maybe is a no no to joke about, for someone else it isn’t so why gatekeeping the conversation? I do agree on not overdoing it since after all that’s not what I’m here for.

>but I think overall the community agrees (through up/downvoting) that humor on HN should be fairly rare.

I disagree with that from two perspectives, for one, the majority of the site’s users are lurkers (I’ve been lurking since 2007ish, first account I made in 2014 and barely used it to comment, and made this mainly to engage a month ago), and these up/down votes only account the users who engage in the comments. The second side is, I believe it’s a different personalities, the ones who engage in comments up/down votes are mostly the intense ones who comes out usually as condescending, since being that after all might get them some of these kudos, and the ones who don’t engage in up/down voting are the relaxed personalities who don’t mind to have some humor from time to time, hence the comments in here saying they don’t favor humor will get more votes than the others, because they are the ones who engage and care about these votes to start with, but that’s my personal observation only.