ruffled's Journal: issue with slashdot user comments

hi, this is a long time reader, first time poster.. honestly theres too much "humour" or "funny" comments in slashdot articles. while i do appreciate the odd joke now and then, it seems like stories are being swamped with humour, as opposed to intellectual discussion. for example in the article Black Hole Blasts Neighbor Galaxy with Deadly Jet (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/17/2149239) the first nine comments are jokes, and continue to appear in great numbers following that. if i wanted to get a laugh at articles, i would have visited a joke site or something. there is too much humour comments in slashdot, and detracts from the informative and insightful nature of slashdot. it would be a great benefit to the site if users could think before they wrote, as nice as they may think their jokes may be, it doesnt look good when theres a chain of them posted after an article, or interspersed through a serious discussion.

Funny -1

[HTH NE1]

Use your "Reason Modifier (assign a modifier to different moderation reasons)" to assign Funny postings a negative skew. The default is zero, meaning the usual +1 applies. Set it to -1 to make Funny mods have no effect on score for you. Set it to -2 to make Funny mods reduce score. Its in your Preferences under Comments.