zlacker

Upvotes are not just for karma, they also show that you say relevant/important things and that people agree with you.

>>fsflov+(OP)
IMO, the most important work that upvotes and downvotes do is to move comments up and down the page.

In that context, HN consensus on downvoting jokes makes more sense. I like a good joke, but they belong on the bottom of the page after the "serious" conversation. It's unfortunate that it's overloaded with karma, but complicating the upvote/downvote system has other drawbacks.

>>bryanl+u3
Counterpoint: half my upvotes are from humour, and some topics cry out for a lightening of tone.

Unsurprisingly, I’ve found levity is best received when incorporating a kernel of fact or observation. Also, timezone matters.

Jokes are easy. Comedy is hard.

>>inopin+ic
Agreed. Humour is a good part of good conversation and an excellent way to provide insight without seeming to be condescending and/or obnoxious.

That being said,it does take skill to squeeze in a dad joke in a discussion of abstract computing problems related to 8081s and I'll go on a limb that HN not lenient on badly executed D-jokes as say reddit would for the attempt.

>>fsflov+(OP)
what about relevant/important things that many people don't agree with? Preventing any community from becoming 1-sided seems like a hard problem to solve, but no less important.

>>fsflov+(OP)
That's literally what they're meant for, but in practice it's an agree/disagree button, albeit not as abused as reddit's is.

>>abfan1+El
One of the things that one can learn from HN is how to do this without necessarily having a confrontation.

>>bryanl+u3
I have a saying on this topic: you’re not as funny as you think you are. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...