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Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

...it's virtually content free...

Not if you run it through ReadBetweenTheLines().

Hey Thomas, lighten up. Normally I'd agree with you, but not today. This post hit me just right...

I'm having a shitty day. Really shitty. 6 levels deep into garbage that never should have been written, trying to add one little feature. Asking myself every 7 minutes if I have time to rewrite without shifting everything else out a week.

I just returned from my 5th candy bar break in the past two hours, wondering why I'm still a programmer. Honestly, today was one of those days when supermarket clerk actually started sounding good.

Then I read this post and suddenly found the energy to make it through the day. I'll strap some kludgy fix onto this shit, ship it out, have a beer, and all will be fresh tomorrow.

Frankly, I'd rather read one post to save my day than 50 to save the world. But that's just me, motherfuckers.

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I liked the article, I just hate the inconsistency here on HN when it comes to humorous/evocative submissions and comments. We scold some for violating the guidelines, and we bless others. Can we sometimes be more relaxed about what is submitted? If the answer is yes as you are indicating, can we make it this way all the time?

Ultimately the evolving community here will make the final judgement. I just feel that the guidelines can be adjusted to reflect what is acceptable.

We scold some for violating the guidelines, and we bless others.

That's really the curse of comedy. The whole point of comedy is to be subversive, to sneak in under the radar of "good taste" and "propriety." But it's hard to do that, a lot of the time it gets rejected out of hand, and it seems very inconsistent.

Absolutely, HN has its fair share of inappropriate/bad jokes, but I think it happens more often because the guidelines are fairly agnostic.

Comedy is subversive, but the venue is usually not. When a comedian gives a routine on stage, the audience is primed and has certain expectations. When the audience's expectations are not aligned, it is bad for both the comedian and the audience.

My limited experiences on HN as a junior user have yielded a certain kind of fuzziness as to what is acceptable. On any given day, there is a lot of variance in the content, but usually HNish and that's a good thing. Officially, the guidelines are posted and they have an emphasis on intellectual stuff/tone, but leave evocative content unexplained. So the community decides, which is usually sporadic, hap-hazard, heavily-dependent on who posted the submission (people have expectations about what Zed Shaw is going to say), and the touchiness of the content. This probably doesn't happen in other communities that are more clearly guided as either relaxed or strict.

> My limited experiences on HN as a junior user have yielded a certain kind of fuzziness as to what is acceptable.

I think that's a good thing. It keeps people on their toes, rather than trotting out the same stupid jokes time and time again. I'll vote for something that's funny in a unique way, but downvote anything smacking of a stupid meme that's been done to death.

That's easy. It's the Picasso rule -- follow the rules until you understand how to break them.

It is true that you are given more slack when your name is known. Think of it as a corollary to the Picasso rule -- others have to know that you know the rules before you are given more leeway on how to break them.

Back in the everything2 days, this was a meme caled "Earn your Bullshit", which they then subsequently expunged from the record because once too many people "earned their bullshit" they realized the proliferation of bullshit was destroying the site.

The bottom line is that humour is easy to upvote, and in-jokes are easy to accumulate in any online community, and so we must be ever vigilant. There's nothing wrong with humour now and again, but it requires ongoing, active rejection, and yes, a bit of hypocrisy to avoid becoming Reddit, where every single story has a contentless pun-filled thread 20 levels deep with a reputation of 1000 at the top falling off logarithmically.

But this isn't really funny. I know the comparison is highly frowned upon, but this thread reminds of Reddit. Or what I remember of it, anyway, back when I didn't mind wasting so much time.

>>>Can we sometimes be more relaxed about what is submitted?

That path leads to http://www.reddit.com

And what's wrong with that? If I don't like what I'm reading on Reddit, I move on to the next comment, story, or subreddit.

Reddit does a better job at support a diverse community of interests and personalities than any single Web forum in the history of computing, IMHO. It could be the next Usenet if it received the funding and infrastructure it deserves.

I honestly do not get all the hating on Reddit that takes place on here.

If you want Reddit, you go to Reddit. Why must HN become one?

I can't keep up with Reddit. Too much noise. Good you have time to. HN currently give ~80-100 RSS items daily to me which is good enough to keep me from surfing all day, and still keep up with latest tech news.

There a lot of members on HN who take themselves, and HN itself, far too seriously.

Lighten the hell up - the message between the lines is that many programming teams are heavier on process than they need to be.

No retreat! No surrender! I'm here watching the battlements keeping the undesirable content out when you can't be. It's what's called "watching your back". I know you'd do the same for me! :|

I really do believe this stuff is a slippery slope. It makes the site worse. Just like yesterday's "Apple Says Yes" comment thread. But I made my snarky comment about it, hit my flag button, and now I'm done. I'm not out for a holy war.

On another note: sorry about your day.

Yes. You are just as welcome to flag this as we are to vote this up, and then we can let democracy sort this out while we go Program, Motherfucker.

"Democracy" would emphatically vote for funny cat pictures.

That depends on the community doing the voting. Which is why I read here rather than Reddit.

"Tricia had just been to see Woody Allen's new movie which was all about the angst of being neurotic in New York. He had made one or two other movies that had explored the same theme, and Tricia wondered if he had ever considered moving, but heard that he had set his face against the idea. So: more movies, she guessed."

- Douglas Adams in "Mostly Harmless"

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