Hacker News Guidelines

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.

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.

I don’t agree with this position. There is a place for administrators to shape the place they want to build for the world and have it be differentiated from other places.

As a thought experiment: HN could turn into a TikTok clone and it would be wildly popular. It will be decided by the users, but the user base will be 100% different. And the world would have lost a unique place for yet another clone.

So I appreciate it when the site owners are opinionated and proactive about maintaining this space.

Edit: Maybe we need an overlay meta HumorNews to channel all of our distracting banter lest the people who yell at you for daring to ask a question in a source repository issue declare "you are wrong, stop being you, stay in your lane, and follow the rules precisely".

While it might have worked for you karma-wise, many bad/average attempts at humor seem to get downvoted a lot and I am glad for it.

When I click on a topic that I'm deeply interested in, the last thing I want to see is someone's attempt at being witty to collect internet points.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36219385

It's worth remembering that HN is a common law system. If you want to nerd out about what the real, fine-grained guidelines are, follow Dan's comments; they're the site jurisprudence.

A corollary to the humor thing: insubstantial comments are problematic when they're negative and less problematic when they're positive or encouraging. That's a principle that goes all the way back to Graham. So you're generally going to be fine attempting a cheerful joke than you are trying for a sly dunk.

Personally there's nothing I can't stand more than people who take life too seriously and can't find the absurdity in every day matters. If someone manages to make me spit out my coffee, give a chuckle or even just a smile then I am eternally grateful. After all, I'm usually on HN because I need a temporary mental break from work.

Value comes in many shapes and forms. But is also in the eye of the beholder. I just ask that you and others don't assume for a second that someone trying to make others laugh is doing it for "internet points." Some people genuinely like trying to bring a smile to the faces of others. Those who succeed are my heroes.

In my experience here (and I have been around a while), the actual case is that some humor is welcome here. But the subset of what is welcomed on HN, versus the set of "all things someone finds humorous", is pretty small. I've had humorous comments upvoted before, even highly so. But there's a pretty particular brand of humor that seems to work here. And you can't always predict how something will be received.

I will say this: some of my most highly upvoted comments are among some of my lowest effort ones (eg, something like "Fuck these guys. The NSA can go go hell" or similar) while I've had tons of comments that I spent half an hour or more working on, doing researching, finding citations, etc.... and they either got zero votes, or got downvoted.

My point is that it's really hard to guess how people will react to any particular comment here, humorous or otherwise, on any particular day.

I don't mind it when someone calls it out with a "/s" or "/jk" (/sarcasm, /joking).

Related: humor at work: https://hbr.org/2020/07/sarcasm-self-deprecation-and-inside-...

As a strictly text-only medium that would be difficult.

That's why I vastly prefer text-only media. Email lists (without attachments), Usenet, or even forums that only do text. The written word requires more effort than just posting pics so quality is almost inevitably better.

Spot on!! I personally couldn’t care less about these brownie points, my whole life been (and still) using alt/nicknames accounts and mostly in sites/chats where the whole upvote system isn’t there, when I help someone in something or make a joke, because it makes me feel better to know I helped someone or brought some smile, I don’t care about your fake coins or whatever, but some people are so fixated about it for some reason, and that’s why I don’t like “influencers” culture in general, they are usually slaves to these thumbs up!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23842179#23845200

I don't always remember to do it, but I do try.

Malign people wrap antisocial stuff in order to get people to eat of it.

A joke with nothing inside it is just annoying and derailing. See the guy who always interrupts the conversation with a pun.

It is possible to wrap decent stuff with humor.

There have certainly been occasions -- albeit rare -- when a humorous HN comment has made me laugh out loud, or at least grin.

But most of the time I find attempts at humor here to be annoying and distracting. Especially when it devolves into a deep thread of few-word or one-line responses that reminds me very much of things I dislike about Reddit.

Put another way: I don't come here for humor. That doesn't mean I won't appreciate it sometimes, but that's not what I'm here for, and the majority of the time I find it to be an unwelcome distraction from what I actually come here for. I come here for discussion, whether just to read it, or to participate in it. Short, humorous comments almost never lead to discussion.

> HN tends to be little better than Reddit at either.

I assure you, you are wrong in this. There are times when I see HN threads devolve into Reddit-land, but it's fairly rare, and very noticeable when it happens, because it reminds me why I generally don't bother with Reddit, but am (mostly) happy here on HN.

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.

> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.

I hope this irony was intentional, as it's top notch.

And in tandem, the guidelines grow with the community to reinforce behaviour that's seen to be fruitful and disincentivise behaviour that's derailing.

I think humour on HN is one of those things that’s, let’s say, “a little bit naughty” - but you can get away with it sometimes if it’s genuine.

On behalf of ESL people, you're offended? Maybe you should let them speak for themselves.

Humor is a big part of what makes life worth living. I love it when someone makes me LOL.

Maybe the non-native English speakers just think, "Well, I don't get that, but whatever." In their other reading, they'll run across idiomatic English sooner or later, too.

Don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out of it alive.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693920>

>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.

Would make great training data these days!

For small values of eternity.