It's not that we're humorless. It's just that we've witnessed what happens in communities where you jokes are encouraged in lieu of actual discussion.
Pull up a thread on programming.reddit.com or slashdot today and you'll find a 50 comment tangent devoted to silly puns. Often there will be four of those tangents to scroll past before you can find discussion about the actual article.
The quick and effective solution to this is to simply disallow silly, jokey comments. As you'll note by reading a typical thread here, it works quite well.
You can just hide the thread (*in Reddit). For me that's ideal, since it keeps these people busy when they could be adding noise. If they had something worthy to contribute, they would in another thread.
ITOH, people participate in both silly puns and important discussions. It's not good practice to downvote people who simply post stuff you're not in the mood to read, or not interested.
Pull up a thread on programming.reddit.com or slashdot today and you'll find a 50 comment tangent devoted to silly puns. Often there will be four of those tangents to scroll past before you can find discussion about the actual article.
The quick and effective solution to this is to simply disallow silly, jokey comments. As you'll note by reading a typical thread here, it works quite well.