I agree that it enforces the spirit of the community. One of my first comments was a joke and it was down-modded hard (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6845

I agree that it enforces the spirit of the community. One of my first comments was a joke and it was down-modded hard (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=684509 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=684509). This quickly taught me the community's expectations in terms of quality of comments.