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Comment by the_duck | Hacker News Reader

Artisanal bitcoins!

They're 67 quadrillion times more expensive, but they're all natural and locally-sourced.

Dropping a comment here because of all the down votes. I agree with them. I come to HN for interesting and thought provoking articles, or for interesting news. Pen-and-paper mining is awesome and is totally in the spirit of HN, but single word jokes about "organic" and "fair trade" Bitcoins are clever, but HN is just the wrong place for that. I'd much rather read comments about attempts of other types of cryptography on paper, or perhaps some history about paper based crypto, or anything that adds factual or newsworthy value to the article. Jokes are neiter factual or newsworthy, and I feel are out of place here on HN.

Thanks for understanding.

I think it is a major mistake to reject comedy as it is a vital element of intelligent discussion. Any group that outright bans jokes is only play-acting at being serious for anyone who might be watching.

A discussion board where every comment must be factual and newsworthy isn't a discussion board; it's a news feed.

Your complaint adds neither factual nor newsworthy value to the discussion. Arguably, it's even less relevant to the subject than the joke comments you're discussing.

The productive thing would have been to simply ignore them and move on, if you had nothing relevant to add.

Your complaint about the complaint adds neither... ya, it's hypocritical. Posts are not out of bounds simply because they are meta.

Interestingly, there was quite a lot of discussion today regarding humor on HN[1]. I for one enjoy the occasional bit of tasteful humor, it would be a shame to restrict the discussion to only "factual or newsworthy" content. As others have mentioned, that wouldn't be a discussion board.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8379973

Here's another single line joke: You must be fun at parties.

Since when was humor disallowed on HN? I think a good unique joke is relevant, as it gets us all excited about the topic. Maybe it doesn't directly add factual information to the subject, but it improves the mood and makes learning more fun.

I mean, sure, we don't want it to be like Reddit, where it's a race to post the cleverest puns, but a chuckle once in a while shouldn't be frowned upon.

"Organic"

"Fair Trade"

"Gluten-Free"

Does paper have gluten in it? Genuinely curious.

Some might, but common paper is mostly just cellulose.

... and mined by organic, free range computers. :)

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