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Comment by georgemcbay | Hacker News Reader

In related news, Italy has started shipping ants off to prison for failing to report earthquakes prior to their occurrence.

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I'm really starting to dislike the number of snarky comments on HN. I used to love the fact that I never saw them. They have become much more common recently. In flux of new users? georgemcbay isn't, but why the increase?? It's why I don't read comments on reddit and why I always liked reading them here. <sigh>

Truth is an absolute defense to a charge of snark.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/opinion/a-failed-earthquak...

There is no truth to the idea that ants are being sent to prison. That was the snarkiness in the comment. One can understand and agree with a sentiment (that sending those scientists to jail was bad) without trying to turn everything into a dig or barb at something else.

A large number of people liked and lie HN because of an environment best categorized as earnest, inquisitive, and constructive. I got the reference, and the post you replied to probably did as well, but even if not, the point still stands.

Real innocent people are jailed. I don't mind we to be reminded about this, no matter how many times.

The Twitter Python lady incident led to a high number of Redditors coming to HN. They liked the deep content here and many decided to stay, not yet understanding the rules.

My thoughts exactly. I wish there was a way to filter them out other than downvoting. Something like a "flag as non-constructive" button with a corresponding settings entry, allowing to either not show them at all or change the display style so that they could be skimmed through quickly.

I personally come to HN to learn new things, not to participate in witty banter.

Tags would work well here. A comment could be tagged as "snarky" or "funny" or "humor", and you could easily filter on that.

The ability to tag comments and stories has been repeatedly suggested on HN and, unfortunately, always rejected.

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