>I'm less bullish on images, unless they are profoundly relevant to the text. Illustrations for the sake of having illustrations are no bueno in my opinion. You want to reduce distractions and visual noise.
I'll respectfully disagree on this one. You can overdo images, but I think readers find a wall of text intimidating and visually too boring, but this is a matter of taste.
>Images should above all never be funny.
I strongly disagree with this. It's like saying a technical blog post should never have jokes.
Why should an image never be funny?
I think you absolutely can mix humor and useful technical insights. xkcd is probably the best example, but there are lots of authors that complement their writing with humor, both in images and in text.
Mixing humor into serious communication comes at the expense of authenticity. It's difficult to know what an author really means when they mix attempts at humor into the writing (and this is often deliberate, if someone makes a particularly spicy political remark, it's usually in the form of a joke, in order to shield from potential backlash). Overall it's a style of writing that feels sophomoric and insecure, as though the message itself isn't enough so there's a need to crack jokes to compensate. This successfully distracts from the message you're trying to convey, ... at the expense of clarity.
Only if you're authentically humorless. ;-)
You sometimes find texts where you get the feeling the author almost expects a sitcom laugh track over the post, and funnies are crammed into every available crevice.
Jokes in HN comments typically don't play well if the whole point of the comment is to make a joke, but if you make a joke in service of a substantive point or attach a joke to an otherwise meaningful comment, there's usually a good response.
I've come to appreciate HN's cultural norms around jokes because if you compare discussion to something like reddit, the top comment is often just a joke or a pop culture quote and then a massive thread of people just talking about the joke or reference rather than the actual story. I think HN's norms do a better job of fostering curious discussion.
I read a really interesting book* about the topic a while back where the authors delve into why humour works and how to find a style of humour that works for you. Unfortunately there are places imo where they fall into their own trap of trying too hard, but honestly it serves to prove the point.
* https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Street%20Jok...