HN is not Reddit. Plenty of people make humorous or entertaining comments, but distracting joke threads full of obvious one-liners and no real content aren't generally welcome.
There's actually a really interesting discussion on Quora, I think, about why they had something along the lines of a no-humor policy.
The problem isn't that people are humorless– it's that when you reward people for humor (often resulting in puns and pithy one liners), after a while, people start competing to be as funny as possible– and that's all that ever rises to the top. It crowds out more deliberate, thoughtful discussion.
I love humor and comedy myself, but it makes sense to me why a discussion forum might deliberately choose to discourage it.
The problem isn't that people are humorless– it's that when you reward people for humor (often resulting in puns and pithy one liners), after a while, people start competing to be as funny as possible– and that's all that ever rises to the top. It crowds out more deliberate, thoughtful discussion.
I love humor and comedy myself, but it makes sense to me why a discussion forum might deliberately choose to discourage it.