status-declined Nov. 12, 2015 (Jon Ericson)
This seems like a useful addition to search. I don't know if it makes sense to limit this to any particular reputation level however. If we do index comments for search, we might as well let anyone use the feature.
At the moment, we are using a version of Elasticsearch that makes mixing commments with posts difficult/impossible. It's possible that when we upgrade to 2.x this feature could be implemented. But that's a ways off. So I'm declining this feature request until then.
Search comments
Often enough to be frustrating, I remember either seeing or making a comment that I'd like to find again -- a helpful reference, a well-written comment that I'd like to use as a template, something involving weaponized unicorns that made me laugh out loud, whatever. If I know who posted it I can painstakingly dig through the "actions" tab from a profile, or I suppose I could try to find it with the LIKE operator in SEDE (if it's old enough). But why not make that easier?
Comments are second-class objects for good reasons and aren't indexed by Google generally searchable on-site, but I don't see the harm in making it a little easier for established users to find them.
I don't mean mingling comments with posts in general search; that could produce a lot of noise. I mean supporting a directive like is:comment
(to go along with is:question
and is:answer
) to search comments intentionally.