as a regular user of wine (the application) something about the title made me think of wine (the drink)

I usually think of wine the application as WINE, while wine the drink gets all the other capitalizations.

Warning jldugger: Despite the topic being a prime candidate for a joke, it's a tough crowd in this thread.

No need to attribute it to malice. Just community members following community guidelines to keep comments relevant, thoughtful, and substantive. Most of the low hanging “jokes” don’t really adhere to that ethos and are typically treated accordingly.

This is essentially - don't be trite.

If you can make a substantive, thoughtful, relevant joke, then that joke will go gangbusters.

I think the joke is good here, because the title is ridiculously ambiguous, and a technical article about how wine is made would suit HN as much as one about WINE.

But when people try hard to make a pun that isn't so good.

I look at it the other way: with the title worded and capitalized as it is, the joke is so obvious that I just can't find it funny at all. Immediate eye-roll and downvote from me when I clicked on the comments and saw that the top comment (at the time, at least) was a joke.

Heh, I just reloaded the page, and it looks like that comment wasn't even a joke after all! The commenter did not read the article, but honestly believed it was about the alcoholic beverage, and has since updated the comment to reflect that.

This is the other thing about this, too: sometimes it's hard to distinguish a joke for someone actually just making a mistake.

Sometimes titles are all-first-caps though. It is not obvious it doesn't mean the drink. If it is first-caps for first words and proper nouns, then why has "Works" got a capital?

Edit: only in the HN submission, but still.

Yes. If you are at a frat party and have a funnel in your mouth.