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speed dating with this merry group of intellectuals must be a blast.

preferably to the temple.

It's kinda cool how different sites develop different dialects and tones. HN's conversational tone is probably the least fun/humorous I've ever encountered on a website, which is (obviously) good in some instances and bad in others.

What would it take to shift a website's tone? What factors, both technical/website-related and people-related, determine how the tone comes across? Food for thought.

What's your theory on why and what would you suggest to fix the problem? You're not leading by example. :-)

Wouldn't exactly call it a problem...

Downvoting behavior.

Read the heavily greyed comments and turn on showing dead comments. Sometimes there is humour in there!

Karma-sensitive people will adjust their behaviour and stop being funny though, amplifying the effect

Fortunately, they are just Internet Points™, so it doesn't really matter if a handful of people feel offended enough by levity to downvote an occasional joking shitpost.

Except if you are down-voted your opinion gets censored. First to those with colour blindness, then eventually to everyone.

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