After all: the original post was a site that made progressively more ridiculous names for Java classes. I could argue that post adds nothing to the discussion in the first place (other than being amusing).

Put simply no, there are a plethora of other sites that allow humor, many here find them to be too noisy or they keep their humor and one liners to the other sites. I personally like humor but have seen how it can destroy an otherwise great informational site. If it where allowed on HN the quality of HN would be destroyed in less than a years time. I have been around the net a long time, and have seen many come and many go, the common thread among all of the ones that went was the posts became utter garbage. One you loose the post, the high value contributors move on, then the quality of information suffers and provides further fuel for poor comments.

So it may seem that HN is a bunch of sticks in the mud, but remember we have a lot of high value people in this community many of us, helped create the net in the very early days, while others are Vally insiders, yet others are successful product people. HN is one of the most valuable resources in the tech world, to loose that would be a grave loss.

That being said, I agree with you on the quality of this article, I think it speaks volumes about the point I am trying to make.

But fair enough. There are plenty of communities online that I am active in that have their own inconsistencies in how they police themselves (whether through moderation or downvoting). I'm not going to take it too personally.