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When I recommend deletion of an answer, I am offered the opportunity to leave a canned comment such as "this does not provide an answer to the question" or telling them how to edit their question if they are posting a self-answer that is not an answer, just an update.

  1. If I choose a comment that is already there, will it be upvoted?
  2. Is there any other consequence (besides adding a new comment or upvoting an existing one) to making that choice? Is someone gathering metrics, for example?

Often, if I see the comment I want is there, I leave No Comment selected because it's less clicking. I might upvote the existing canned comment or not. But I wonder if I am depriving some Big Data process of the ability to determine what fraction of bad answers are "I'm having this problem, too" or the like. Or is it really just a handy way to leave a comment?

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  • 3
    I've verified 1 to be true
    – mhlester
    Commented Apr 30, 2014 at 22:03
  • 2
    @Stilly.stack, not sure if you're replying to me. I'm not saying 2 is therefore not true, just that it upvotes the comment rather than adding a duplicate. What analytics happen behind the scenes (#2) is for the developers to answer. Just there's no need to worry about duplicating answers.
    – mhlester
    Commented Apr 30, 2014 at 22:10

1 Answer 1

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  1. Yes, I verified this several times. No.

  2. Shog9 wrote here:

    The "comment" option is completely optional and the default is "no comment" […]

    This suggests that there is no other consequence than adding a comment or upvoting an existing one.

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    it doesn't suggest that to me at all. I am curious if someone is counting our choices. The fact we don't have to make a choice doesn't imply the ones we make aren't counted.
    – Kate Gregory
    Commented Apr 29, 2016 at 14:11
  • @KateGregory: If SE were counting our choices, that statement would sabotage that statistics (unless SE wants to find out how that comment affects the choices in that dialogue, but that would be quite absurd). Shog’s is no incontestable proof – I fully admit that. But it does suggest it.
    – Wrzlprmft
    Commented Apr 29, 2016 at 18:15
  • Point 1 is incorrect, I've verified it several times. When I choose a comment that's already there, nothing happens, and it doesn't get upvoted. There is a feature request here asking for such a feature though.
    – Donald Duck
    Commented Feb 4, 2018 at 19:42
  • @DonaldDuck: Indeed, I confirmed that this feature seems to be gone now. If I would have to guess, I would say that this change broke it.
    – Wrzlprmft
    Commented Feb 5, 2018 at 9:26

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