A guide to moderating comments

Question

Commenting is one of the unsung heroes of Stack Exchange. The help center suggestions that you should submit a comment if you want to:

• Request clarification from the author;
• Leave constructive criticism that guides the author in improving the post;
• Add relevant but minor or transient information to a post (e.g. a link to a related question, or an alert to the author that the question has been updated).

These are all essential for coordinating the creation of useful questions and answers, but originally comments were not part of the design for this system! During the beta period, it was observed that, without a way to annotate or discuss specific posts, answers became noisy and tangential. Therefore, a separate space was carved out for this purpose below each post, leaving answers free for content that, y'know, actually tries to answer the question.

This created a problem, however: how do we expose useful comments inline with answers without adding back the same amount of noise comments were created to alleviate? The solution was to pick off the 5 comments deemed most-useful by the voters. This simple strategy proved to be quite durable, working admirably in most common cases - but it suffers from a few drawbacks:

• Comments can become obsolete, addressing issues or concerns long ago addressed via edits to the post itself.
• Those one-liner contests Jeff alluded to don't always produce results as charming and witty as one might like.
• With the addition of comment replies and real-time notifications, comments can be used for casual conversation and debate - fun and perhaps even enlightening for those involved, noise for those just looking for an answer.

Thus the need for comment moderation. This involves three groups of people:

1. The authors of the comments themselves can clean up after they're done, if they so desire.
2. Privileged users can flag comments in response to the issues noted above, bringing them to the attention of the moderators. (They can also vote on comments, controlling to a degree which ones are shown)
3. Moderators can remove individual comments or entire comment threads, move comments to chat, and even lock posts if comments are getting unruly.

This raises several questions, which I'll try to address below:

1. When should I delete my own comment?
2. When should I flag a comment?
3. When should moderators delete comments?
4. When should moderators move comments to chat?
5. When should moderators edit comments?

These guidelines are based on the authors' experience moderating comments on various sites. Individual communities, particularly on meta sites, may benefit from additional guidelines - this guide is intended as a baseline.

Answer 1

When should I flag a comment?

When it will be shown to future readers but offers them nothing of value, or what value it has is overshadowed by the comment being unfriendly or outright rude.

There are many different sorts of comments that qualify here, roughly categorized by the flagging dialogue itself:

The first two flags address similar behavior issues, in different degrees:

• It contains harassment, bigotry, or abuse.
  This comment attacks a person or group. Learn more in our Code of Conduct. Abuse also covers complete, meaningless gibberish from new users who have no other positive contributions (see the FAQ on spam and abuse flags on posts). Comments which qualify for flagging as "abuse of the system" would primarily be found on posts which also qualify for flagging as abuse for the same reason, due to the reputation required to comment on others' posts on most sites.

• It's unfriendly or unkind.
  This comment is rude or condescending. Learn more in our Code of Conduct.

  Comments that contain harassment, bigotry or abuse or that are unfriendly or unkind should always be flagged. What you consider rude is subjective, but as a general rule if it is more likely to upset readers than it is to inform them, it qualifies. In deciding between the two flags, consider whether the comment is directly attacking a person (or the content they create) or a group. If so, it's probably appropriate to flag with the first reason. If it contains "pithy" jokes made at the authors' expense or "snarky" advice meant more to score points with the commenter's peers than to inform or educate it's probably a better fit for the second.

• It's no longer needed covers a wide variety of different comments, including:

  • Obsolete/outdated comments. They served a purpose once upon a time but no longer: requests for clarification that've been addressed via edits, suggestions for improvement that were long ago heeded, etc. Don't worry about these if they're not displayed by default - if most readers don't see them, they're not causing any harm.

  • Chatty comments. They might be polite, friendly, or even informative - but have nothing whatsoever to do with the post! Whether tangential discussions or simply two friends chewing the fat, these are pretty benign - right up until they're being shoved in the face of every reader two years later. Again, don't worry too much about these if you don't see them by default.

  • Jokes, "thank you", etc. - not necessarily harmful in the moment, but distracting and annoying after the fact.

• Something else covers everything else in a comment or comment thread that might benefit from a moderator stepping in to clean up. Be explicit about the problem that you see - don't assume it'll be obvious to the moderator.

If there are only one or two problematic comments on a post, just flag them individually; if most or all of an entire comment thread needs to go, just flag the post itself and suggest that it be purged.

Note: don't be too concerned if the occasional comment flag is declined; comment value is often subjective and moderators are encouraged to process flags quickly - in most cases, it's no big deal if comments persist a bit longer than needed. Declined comment flags do not count toward flag bans.

Moderator note: Moderator flags of all types on comments take action immediately, deleting the comment that is flagged - this can serve as a substitute for deletion on overtly abusive or unfriendly comments, as the flags then serve to keep a record of such behavior.

Answer 2

When should moderators delete comments?

Same advice as for flaggers: when they offer no currently applicable constructive requests for improvement to the post.

Moderators may generally process comment flags without much deliberation: if it doesn't immediately appear to be needed, remove it; if it might be, leave it. There are almost always more useful things to do than to stress about comments.

Here are a few other tips for processing comment flags efficiently:

• You may decline if you think the flag is too questionable.
• Let another mod handle if the subject matter is not familiar to you.
• If the flagged comments appear to be part of a larger, now obsolete conversation, then remove the entire conversation.
• If many problematic comments are interspersed with a few allowable ones, purge the lot and then selectively undelete those that suggest improvements.
• Don't worry about cleaning up benign conversations that don't appear on page load.
• Do purge old, benign conversations that are in the face of every reader.
• Prefer to use flag deletion to better document the comment as opposed to non-flag deletion.

Answer 3

When should moderators move comments to chat?

This option is available at any time from the mod menu on any post with comments:

How you use it depends on the situation. Keep in mind that you can only move comments to chat once for a given post, so consider carefully whether to use it or not. If the comments continue after moving them, you must resort to other options.

Handling an active tangential or off-topic discussion

Simply copying the existing comments to a chat room and leaving a link to it can serve to encourage participants (and others interested in continuing the discussion) to follow. If there's no pressing need to delete existing comments, leave them for context - though you may need to reinforce your encouragement by deleting any subsequent comments.

If the conversation has become extremely off-topic or distracting, you may wish to purge the entire set of comments and selectively restore those that remain relevant to the post.

Archiving a completed conversation

Sometimes a conversation can be useful in understanding the history of a post, but not terribly important otherwise for future readers. To remove the distraction, move the comments to chat, delete them, and then edit the resulting comment to point to the transcript rather than the chat room. Example:

Comment thread archived.

Note that the new room will be held to the normal activity requirements for room deletion and freezing. If there aren't at least 16 comments from two or more users being archived, the room will be automatically deleted after 7 days, which essentially has the same effect as just deleting the comments. If you do take the extra effort to archive a comment discussion, and there are not at least 16 comments from multiple users being archived, be sure to post messages in the new room to bring the total up to 16 (17 including the automatic Feeds message).

Answer 4

When should I delete my own comment?

When it offers nothing of value to either the author of the post or to future readers. This is particularly important when the comment is shown by default on page load - if readers need not opt-in to reading it, it should offer them something of value.

Try to avoid leaving long comment threads "broken" by deleting your comments while leaving replies to them. If a long thread has become irrelevant, coordinate the removal by suggesting deletion to the other participants and giving them time to respond before removing your own comments. If the thread is old and the participants have moved on, flag the post itself for moderator attention and suggest purging - be sure to explain why!

Answer 5

When should moderators edit comments?

Almost never. Comments have no publicly visible revision history (the changes are logged in case of abuse, but these are only visible to moderators). Therefore, it is critical that moderator edits do not misrepresent the author's meaning or intentions. Edits may be appropriate in the following scenarios:

• To fix typos or other minor errors that the author has written a second comment to correct (at which point the second comment can be deleted). This is usually a waste of time, but can be worthwhile in particularly embarrassing scenarios or with a broken link.

• To remove rude or inflammatory language from otherwise-worthwhile comments. Again, it is very rare that this is worthwhile – normally, rude/inflammatory comments should be deleted, but sometimes the rest of the comment is valuable enough to be worth preserving. Examples:

  • -1: I'm downvoting you as hard as I can, because this answer contains an error on line 5: you should never poke bears with a sharp stick just to see if they're still alive.

    Removing the italicized text may be worthwhile to allow readers to focus on the potentially life-saving advice without sparking a voting war.

  • The onset of frostbite can be subtle; therefore, to this advice I would also add that, when spending the night in harsh conditions, it is important to prepare ahead to protect yourself from the elements. Also, your mom.

    Again, remove the bit in italics.

  When editing comments for tone, you should strive to make the smallest edit necessary to correct the problem. You should also generally leave a comment advising the comment's author against such faux pas in the future! Such commentary helps to avoid the appearance of deceit.

• To fix a comment that you just converted from an answer. Sometimes, converting an answer to a comment destroys the formatting or cuts off parts of the post. You can and should fix those issues, but make sure to keep the post’s content intact.