Comment by karlshea
12 years ago
I think that's the finer point that's missed when Slashdot (or most of Reddit) is brought up: "troll culture at its very core".
Even though the quality of discussion on HN might ebb and flow, or there might be more negative comments than positive at times, the culture here isn't ever going to tolerate Natalie Portman, hot grits, or image macros.
I pointed out something similar in another comment but it's worth focusing on. One of the biggest problems of both reddit and slashdot is that they embrace humor at their core. This may not seem so bad but it's poison for mature conversation. Humor is cheap. And it doesn't require engagement.
What you see on both reddit and slashdot is an increasing tendency toward irony as the basic approach to any subject (4chan is the same way too). This overwhelms and actively drives away discussions that are serious and not ironic. This is why the highest quality subreddits (like askscience and askhistorians) enforce very strict rules and actively discourage humor for humor's sake. This is a big reason why stackexchange is so successful as well. And it doesn't mean humor is unwelcome at all these places, just that it needs to be part of something productive or humnorous enough to overcome the strong bias against it.
> Even though the quality of discussion on HN might ebb and flow, or there might be more negative comments than positive at times, the culture here isn't ever going to tolerate Natalie Portman, hot grits, or image macros.
HN suffers from a more mild case of it with people being compelled to link at least one or two vaguely relevant xkcd comics in nearly every discussion without additional content. I like xkcd, but there's no reason to create noise by linking to it any time a comment or story reminds someone of it.