Dennis Ritchie posted, sharing an extremely early version of a C compiler. Richard Heathfield (well known C book author) jokingly chided Ritchie for posting something off-topic, as it was not part of ANSI C. In typical Usenet fashion, this triggered a huge thread, arguing over the appropriateness of the joke. Even Linus Torvalds got involved.
Apparently Heathfield emailed Ritchie privately to apologize, and Ritchie's response is well known to anyone in clc: "Usenet is a strange place."
It shouldn't matter whether or not it's hilarious. Attempts at humor often fall flat on the internet and are somewhat frowned on per HN guidelines. You're objectively wrong and anyone who agrees should chime in to say so. Disagree? Fine, but come to this thread to tell us why. #s
> Saying “ban humor” leaves the community very sterile.
...or makes it even more hilarious.
Because you really can't "ban" humor. A moderator who actually thinks that's possible will soon have humor flying over their head. Even Stackoverflow has humor despite the best efforts of the self-appointed vote-to-close police.
This is precisely the problem: differing views not just on what is actually humorous, but the role that is should play in conversations, written or otherwise. Better to just avoid it all together #s ::I think we're off to a good start replicating the usenet scenario::
I think this may have been an attempt at humor by ruined where the post they made employs similar phrasing that dang uses when he's informing a user about a violation of the HN guidelines.
Actually the annoying thing here is, that the pointless discussion is achieved, while the link to the source code doesn't work (maybe temporarily overloaded from HN? Maybe dead)
Dennis Ritchie posted, sharing an extremely early version of a C compiler. Richard Heathfield (well known C book author) jokingly chided Ritchie for posting something off-topic, as it was not part of ANSI C. In typical Usenet fashion, this triggered a huge thread, arguing over the appropriateness of the joke. Even Linus Torvalds got involved.
Apparently Heathfield emailed Ritchie privately to apologize, and Ritchie's response is well known to anyone in clc: "Usenet is a strange place."
Original thread: https://groups.google.com/g/alt.folklore.computers/c/wbzzoyS... (I believe it was crossposted to clc)
Some discussion of the saga: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Dennis_Ritchie
RIP dmr