As I've painfully discovered myself, being humorous, especially sarcastic or filled with dry humor often attracts downvotes too, no matter how funny you thought the joke was.
I fully understand and agree with the rationale, hartror. It's just a little difficult to reign myself in and exercise the kind of self control needed here. But the inevitable and swift downvotes I've gotten certain helped to drive the point home.
I need some kind of Chrome extension that injects a confirmation dialog box that asks 'Are you trying to be funny?' before I post to HN.
The idea is that there are plenty of other places[1][2] to be humourous on the interwebs. By coming down hard on the few instances that are posted it stops entire threads turning into just these amusing but ultimately unproductive comments.
edw519 regularly says something laugh-out-loud funny that also helps the conversation along, and scores a bunch of points. Other people often say things that are only slightly funny and have no other value to them, and score a bunch of negative points.
Funny and contributing = upvoted
Not funny and contributing = upvoted
Funny and not contributing = downvoted
Not funny and not contributing = downvoted
Don't make the mistake of thinking funny/not funny is the deciding factor.