I wonder if you could just have three buttons/widgets: insightful, funny, and troll.
Then just click what you think of the article, and insightful articles rise to the top.
Heck, you could even make it a user preference whether to sort insightful first, funny first, or troll first (why you'd want to do that I don't know, but some might)
It would involve just one more graphic element than the current up/down arrows, and would give people release to say the funny things when they feel like they have to instead of having the site self-police.
I'd go so far as to say that I'd enjoy reading jokes and one-liners the folks here have to say about the news. We've got some really smart people that read HN. I bet their jokes are hilarious.
But that's only sometimes, not all of the time. If there could be a button for turning jokes off or on (or sorting by funny) then it'd be a hoot to see the site in that asepct.,
In short, I don't think it's a human behavior problem. Computer systems should let people act like people naturally act. This is a display problem. Some folks are seeing things in spots they would not like them to be in.
Instead of viewing the site as some huge function to take limited input and provide maximum output, perhaps it's better viewed as a big bucket of various randomized data. Then the purpose of the site is to sort and organize that random data in such a way as to provide maximum utility.
> I'd go so far as to say that I'd enjoy reading jokes and one-liners the folks here have to say about the news. We've got some really smart people that read HN. I bet their jokes are hilarious.
I agree. HN, while of course useful in other ways, seems so humorless to me. I understand that some HNers are paranoid about HN turning into Slashdot or Reddit, but it would probably be nice sometimes to have a more community-like feel, even if it were totally segregated from the "real" HN.
I wonder if you could just have three buttons/widgets: insightful, funny, and troll.
Then just click what you think of the article, and insightful articles rise to the top.
Heck, you could even make it a user preference whether to sort insightful first, funny first, or troll first (why you'd want to do that I don't know, but some might)
It would involve just one more graphic element than the current up/down arrows, and would give people release to say the funny things when they feel like they have to instead of having the site self-police.