I think the point of the post is to express a slight frustration over stories ranking high simply because they come from specific sources, and the fact that many people seem to approve of these posts simply because of the source. If everyone that upmods actually thinks the posts are valuable enough to upmod based on the content and thinks that other users would benefit from the content, then that’s fine; it’s just that there’s a lot of great content out there, and it seems as though certain posts get upmodded more simply based upon the source.
The upvotes that people give this "joke" (it’s not really meant to be funny at all), regardless of how often they’ve heard it before, probably means that they agree with the sentiment, and as members of the same community have the option to make that vote as they see fit. Hopefully they don’t upmod because they find the post humorous. It’s meant to be commentary on the state of the community, and your negative responses only seem to validate the point further.
Interesting how the net’s anonymity results in much sharper criticism than you find the real world. For example, you would never call a joke stupid if someone you had just met told it, regardless of how many times you’d heard it before. Something to consider, especially given that we’re all here to focus on the same goal: learning from one another, gaining valuable insight, growing as a community. Not disrespecting one another.
I may not have been a registered user for very long, but I have read HN for quite a long time before that, and am just as immersed and interested in the startup community as any one of you. I agree that, if anyone cares about karma, a formula that gives karma based upon length of time they’ve been a registered member of the community is a cool idea.. I’m all for informative, excellent content, but I’m also not against a bit of humor, commentary, or just plain fun. What good is being entrepreneurial if you can’t have fun?
Ironically, the way the submission system works, if you submit a story that has already been submitted, it simply registers your submission as an upvote.
So think about it. If there are 20 HN readers out there with your rss submitter, then everything from 37signals would instantly have 19 points. This would most definitely instantly catapult the story to #1 on the front page, garnering it a lot of exposure and opportunity for more upvotes.
So really it's a self-fulfilling prophesy. Twenty people all trying to submit the same story the instant it comes out results in a karma lottery for whoever randomly submits it first. The other 19 people will see the instant karma and try even harder.
I thought it was witty, and all things considered I prefer good ideas in witty packages to good ideas all by themselves. That probably explains why Joel Spolsky obtained some early popularity: many people found his posts entertaining and educational at the same time.
The problem is that online, when there aren't any vocal or body language cues to go by, people tend to take posts like this as snarky. I'm sure OP didn't mean it that way.
