Comment deletion notification

Question

I think you should be notified if anything of yours is deleted or even flagged, preferably with some explanation (even if it's a simple categorisation like #rude, #irrelevant, #incorrect) and who did it.

Recently, a couple of comments of mine vanished without warning or evidence afterwards. I'm fine with deletion, but I think it should be used sparingly and be based on democratic decisions. What's the harm of letting a comment simply sit with no up-votes or responses rather than outright removal? Or allow downvoting and then negatively voted comments are hidden by default?

I get the impression that anything I post could be deleted. Very few people want to be unpopular or do the wrong thing. It takes time to understand what something is about and how best to use it (this site). Whether or not what I posted deserved to be deleted is irrelevant because I got no feedback. No-one can learn without feedback. The number of frivolous comments with many upvotes I've seen shows how inconsistently the rules are applied. A community that gives too much power to highly rated users won't grow but turn stagnant.

Sorry if this was rude, inappropriate or pathetic. I'm aware that similar discussions have occurred. In any case, I'll continue to use the site and move on...

Answer 1

Well, these were the comments:

Ctrl+c, ctrl+v.

@Jaseem Maybe you should direct that question to the man with 20 Classes and 10 Activities...

Quite clearly unconstructive. Can you really be so shocked that your comments were removed?

Comments are third-class citizens in our system by design; they are little more than post-it notes on the units of real work, questions and answers. As such they are afforded little protection and the burden of proof is on the comment to be useful and constructive.

If you see other comments that you feel are unconstructive, flag them.

Answer 2

I’ve recently noticed this happen to two of my comments. Both in cases in which I don’t agree with the deletion. Deletion without giving the possibility to appeal is unjust; but without notification is vile.

I immediately need to apologise for the strong language, and I’d like to stress that I don’t want to accuse or insult anybody. Nevertheless, I feel quite strongly that it’s a morally flawed system that should be fixed.

Let me explain why: Both of these (presumably flagged and then) deleted comments were in the context of discussions in which my interlocutor was probably wrong.

Of course I’m biased. But in one of the cases my interlocutor went so far as to revenge downvote several unrelated answers (the downvotes were later automatically undone, of course), and, after I alerted him to the fact that he was displaying inacceptable behaviour, he deleted his own offensive comment and … “vanished”.

In the second case I don’t recall what I could have written that would trigger flags (this alone would make it important to notify me of deleted comments! If only so I could see which behaviour is deemed unacceptable). But the interlocutor played me off with a (in my opinion) tacky

your comment was funny […] I think you misunderstood the question intent completely”

(I don’t think I did. The question was also subsequently closed as “not constructive”.)

I do understand that comments will be flagged and/or deleted, and that I don’t have to agree with that for it to be justified. But I do request the fairness and courtesy of being alerted to this fact.

Finally, an objection to the objection:

Comments are third-class citizens in our system by design

That’s all fine. But by not notifying the user you’re making the user a third-class citizen of the system. And if comments are outside the rules of fair play, then they are not a legitimate citizen of the system at all and should be removed completely.

Answer 3

You're caring too much about the comments.

Comments (except on MSO), have the sole purpose of improving the respective post. Or that's the intention behind the comment system anyway. Of course, we can have a few jokes and all. And we sometimes get discussions, which are OK if they are short.

IMO, even the constructive comments can be deleted after they serve their purpose (resulting in a relevant edit to the post). Discussions should be deleted once completed. But that's just my opinion, it may not be shared by others.

As Jeff said, Comments are third-class citizens here. If a comment deletion results in a notification, this may start an argument unrelated to the post. And mods do delete comments often once they have served their purpose. This will just lead to inbox clutter.

As for rude comments, notifying the user leads to whining and unnecessary noise. Same reasons as "compulsory commenting for downvotes" was rejected. If a user recieves enough flags, a mod will contact him/her privately (there also is an automatic system rep deduction or something for xyz flags). But doing this for each rude comment will be annoying and will lead to a whine fest.

Just get used to comments disappearing. I have :)

Oh, and by the way @Adel, I fail to see how this qualifies as "not enough attention". You got an answer from Jeff which the community agrees with. Could you please explain what you're looking for in the question?

Answer 4

I am with Jeff on this one - comments should not contain important or vital information that you worked hard to gather. It's just a comment, and for something more simply post full answer, which unlike a comment can't be deleted without a trace. (You'll see it even when deleted and 20K+ members can undelete it)

Why so many comments are deleted you may ask? To keep the place clean.. having lots of comments clutter the post itself.

Referring something you said:

A community that gives too much power to highly rated users won't grow but turn stagnant

In case of comments deletion it's really not relevant, as only moderators can delete comments, not any highly rated users. Ordinary users with lots of reputation can at most delete posts (questions and answers) but again, they can also undelete them and author of deleted answer can still see it and even know who deleted it and when.

The above appears to be incorrect, see comment below - just in case the comment will get deleted here it is:

If a comment has X number of flags it gets deleted, with or without mod intervention... See this answer on one of my questions.

Answer 5

Deleting comments without notifying the user is an unreasonable thing to do.

And some comments shouldn't even be deleted. There are questions and answers where comments actually add something useful but that something may not be important enough to edit into the question/answer. The least one could ask is (1) for them to be moved to the chat, (2) appear organized by answer in the chat, and perhaps (3) provide a link next to each answer taking the user to that specific location in the chat.

This way someone can easily go there and read what was said in relation to the answer or question. And the main page of the question would be kept uncluttered.
(Maybe have said link with a little counter with number of comments in the chat.)

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The idea that we want a single question and a single great answer sounds nice in theory and a useful target to have in practice, but users often add little bits that are relevant but not answer material. Like a link to somewhere relevant to the answer, or a comment clarifying something.

This answer has over 50 comments. I haven't read all of them but the first ones are useful. A question is asked and an answer is given; in the comments.

1. Would it make sense to edit it into the answer? I don't think so.
2. Should the user have created a new question to ask about the "subsidies to strawberry growers"? Maybe, but here it's in context of the answer and of the question and I don't think it would make a good question with only what is written here.

This is a screenshot of the first comments on that answer. I'd leave only the link to the answer but the comments may be deleted at some unknown point in the future without notification or prior warning rendering this answer half-obsolete.

(For the record, I believe the first comment is also useful; not shown in image, but has close to 80 upvotes.)

(This was supposed to be a short comment, but I figured I'd elaborate and write an answer instead. This way I'll know if it gets deleted. I think... not sure we receive notifications for deleted answers either.)