As a counterpoint, I prefer a world where comments are not overly policed. I believe it stifles creativity, and I think comments like yours harm not help the community by making people less comfortable sharing.
While I generally agree with your stance on over-policing, a third of the comments under this article are off-topic. HN is unique in that the community somewhat agrees that discussion should be on-topic and has a lot less tolerance for single-line jokes or sarcasm.
> I think comments like yours harm not help the community by making people less comfortable sharing.
Maybe I am unique in that, but if your contribution to a thread on a deep learning paper is a joke about decepticons or electrical transformers, it's okay to be less comfortable about sharing.
I'd be fine with a joke which somehow manages to pun NN transformers, electrical transformers, and the series about robots. That would be an interesting and sufficiently novel joke. It's high surprisal.
I have no problem policing the low-effort, un-novel, unsurprising, lame quips about expecting other use of the word transformer. It adds nothing of value and dilutes threads. I've gotten downvoted for doing it, most of us have, it's a right of passage, and one that I appreciate, since it makes HN comment threads jam-packed with interesting info.
I interpret these puns as lighthearted feedback to the point that the title is unclear and jargony. Apparently a transformer is some machine learning thing, I'm sure it is an appropriate name for a journal publication where everybody who sees it will be in the field, but to an outsider it is not really obvious what this title is about.
Exactly. The culture of "no" and control-freaks trying to shackle others into thinking down a linear path. This often leads to ideological homogeneity and pushes a large fraction of people away, amplifying homogeneity.
Instead of downvoting or flagging for merely disinterest or disagreement, perhaps there should be some sort of helpful "hide button" in the form of a plus-to-minus sign next to "parent"?
Isn't that why most people become police officers and other authority figures? You'll just have to torture living things, wet the bed, and set fires like the rest of us. /s /s /s /s /s
Don't forget moral panicking, outrage crybullying, serial scapegoats crucifixion, taking-out aggression, bikeshedding, and cyberdisinhibitionism are also part of this complete breakfast.
> I think comments like yours harm not help the community by making people less comfortable sharing.
Maybe I am unique in that, but if your contribution to a thread on a deep learning paper is a joke about decepticons or electrical transformers, it's okay to be less comfortable about sharing.