I've thought about this a little bit lately, and I've started to believe that it may be difficult to have both; if you let "funny" start to be valued, then it quickly overtakes the other values.
Having spent quite a bit of time on both Reddit comment threads and HN threads, sometimes on the same topics, I find the earnestness and thoughfulness of HN extremely refreshing. At reddit, I feel momentarily amused but then I'm left empty from the total flippancy and lack of substance.
I think that most of the “funny” comments usually decrease the signal to noise ratio. But I have a personal rule of not downvoting them when they are already gray. I only downvote gray comments if they are very offensive.
Having spent quite a bit of time on both Reddit comment threads and HN threads, sometimes on the same topics, I find the earnestness and thoughfulness of HN extremely refreshing. At reddit, I feel momentarily amused but then I'm left empty from the total flippancy and lack of substance.