I don't come to HN for jokes either, but I'm always surprised by the extent to which incidental displays of cleverness go over like farts in churches. I keep wondering if the people who feel compelled to police this stuff heavily also struggle to connect with "the normals" at work.
It has been observed that as online communities like HN grow, the signal-to-noise ratio falls on a progression that can be summarized as HN -> Reddit -> Digg. As we become more complacent regarding downvotes on well-written comments because we disagree or not downvoting witty fluff, HN slides farther and farther into the noise pit. No one yet knows how to permanently stave off the Diggnation of HN. But, in the mean time, it is worth trying to delay as much as possible.
I don't want Hacker News to be a place where everyone types their opinion, and if they don't have an opinion, they type something else. I care about reading informed experts' thoughts about interesting things, not some guy's display of cleverness.
