Why can't I moderate comments on my question?

Question

Sometimes, I get comments on my questions that are incorrect (based on a misunderstanding of the question by the commenter, or possibly a lack of knowledge / experience in the problem domain).

Here's something of the above, well developed:

Encrypt in Javascript, decrypt in PHP, using public-key cryptography Update Meanwhile the post got cleaned up, and all comments were removed.

What are the reasons behind preventing users from moderating comments on their posts (at least remove comment votes)?

Answer 1

Back in the early days of Stack Overflow, this was allowed.

And it was abused.

It's the way it is now to prevent abuse and strengthen accountability.

Answer 2

Are you a moderator? If not, then you cannot moderate, of course. Or at least, not in something at this level.

I am not sure about what you mean by "remove votes", but if you're talking about "removing votes from upvoted comments" that would be an abuse, and even moderators cannot do it (I don't see why they should).

By the way, two points about comments:

1. Clarification comments and normal comments are welcome since they help the community shape the question (fix some wording, clarify a point, etc). When this is done and the changes have been applied to the question (when needed), comments should be removed. It's not like you need to do it right away, but they are not needed anymore (and here you see why comments are seen as ephemeral or second-class citizens). If you want to make sure someone is acknowledged for this you can write "Edited per username's suggestions" in the edit summary.

2. Comments that are only chatty and that do not add anything to the discussion should be removed (on Meta we are more tolerant), and you can flag these for moderator attention. Don't just flag everything or a comment just because they disagree with you or because they down-voted you. Flag comments that objectively are chatty and not constructive (or offensive where applicable).

Hope that helps.