@doppelgreener Super late, but whatever: I've never really thought about it before, but one of my favourite moments in shows with live audiences is when there's a brief pause between the funny moment and the audience figuring it out and laughing.

@Miniman Oh yeah, those are great.

@doppelgreener What annoys me is that based on the show progression I am somehow inclined to think that Big Bang got derailed mostly because of executive meddling. Having saw most seasons due to what basically amount to Ash's reasons (== relatives) I can say that I do see a clear switch in focus - to the point that characters were completely rewritten to match the new narrative (see: Amy).

Mind you, I don't mean that the first episodes got it completely right - a lot of times it was just the opposite of what is now.... "Geek celebration" sometimes was just a lie to cover "making fun of non-geek people".

That's said, I don't think the first episodes were intended to be completely understandable by "anyone".

Many jokes were left unexplained (like Sheldon wearing a black-and-white stripes costume at an Halloween party and claiming to be dressed as the doppler effect) - and I don't think at that time they actually expected "everyone" to just research the actual meaning of the jokes.

I know this has already been stated, but I think it may be worth noticing.

Another clear example would be D&D related jokes. In the first few seasons they were pretty specific (often referencing specific rules in a specific edition) to the point that I wouldn't expect anyone who hasn't familiarity with that rule to get it. Now, as others have already said it is just "look, they play some board game! Laugh!"

@Miniman yes, as opposed to laughtrack where it's just every time they do a line, you get the canned laughter

to be honest I am not entirely happy with live audience stuff either but at least it's leagues better than canned freaking laughter

@trogdor since you really seem to like them I will propose to the staff to add canned laughter tracks to the chat as the next April, 1st joke :P

@trogdor Congratulations! You BOOKHORSE evolved into RAPIDASH.

lol

getting your pokemon real angry so they evolve is,.... certainly an interesting strategy

Considering the description of some of the mega-evolutions added in the recent games.... that is somehow canon.

ok...... Remember the HNQ problem?

THIS became a HNQ (see the edit history - now the history )

and was automatically tweeted on what I assume is the official site Twitter account.

I fear that even with the recent changes, the HNQ still fails at its intended purpose. Instead of intriguing people to join a community by presenting high quality, valuable content it just selects stuff based on odd criteria that more often than not backfire.

@Derpy one issue as I see it is that the algorithm is often unable to determine between "controversial and emotionally charged" and "popular and high quality"

Presumably, that is why they are now allowing mods to override.

@Rubiksmoose yep, that is totally right.

@Derpy fwiw, the tweet behavior has been standard since I've been around.

@Rubiksmoose and that is part of the problem since that will be forever a REACTION, by which I mean they can't filter the "bad" content out before it gets there.

@Derpy Indeed. And I haven't really thought about it that much but it seems like unless you switch to a system where mods have to allow a question to get onto HNQ there aren't a huge amount of options.

That is an interesting idea for sure.

that way one could actually see content that the users of the site have found to be high quality and maybe say "this site is nice! I want to contribute"

instead.... we get just the usual funny title that attracted many view in a short time

like the infamous "How can I safely eat a corpse" (which if you didn't guess it was actually about eating monsters corpses... in NetHack)