I downvote almost all humor here, unlike Reddit where I go out of my way to upvote even unfunny but worthwhile attempts.

HN is a high-effort place, relatively speaking. The trick with humor in a comments section is that it’s almost always low effort.

> lol I misread the post title as being about boobs

> lol I bet his mouth wasn’t the only place they found one

> lol Russia

> lol North Korea

Comments like this are pervasive on Reddit. I’m glad on HN they’re not.

When a joke on HN is clever or unique, then I upvote. This happens maybe 3 times a year.

The point is not that you should be able to ban humor in one place or another.

The point is that you should be free to perform humor in another place and not have that bleed over in the place where it is banned and have repercussions there.

It's the same reason why so many authors since time immemorial wrote pseudonymously

Humor is not banned and nor should it be. But maybe, to avoid confusion we could make humourus posts have a * or someting? And maybe humor can live in a separate section of the site so it doesn't mix with the other content. But if it still doesn't work I think we all know of a final solution for humor.