So I read here:
If a comment is flagged by enough users it will be auto-soft-deleted. There is no penalty for this. Flagged comments will be surfaced to moderators...
So, what exactly happens to auto-soft-deleted comments? To elaborate:
Are the comments still in the flagged queue for moderator attention? If so, and the flag is marked as invalid, will the comment be un-deleted?
I'd also like to bring attention to this, where the answer says:
Comments are second class citizens, and I don't see the need to be notified when a comment I wrote is deleted.
Isn't this the wrong approach? Users need to be notified so they'll stop doing what they're doing wrong. Otherwise they just keep happily posting inappropriate content and being none-the-wiser about any wrong-doing, even after many flagged comments.
As far as I speculate users will only be notified if a moderator makes a comment regarding the post.
If comments are removed from the queue once auto-soft-deleted, and the user isn't notified, does this make sense? For a flag to be auto-soft-deleted, it has to be of such bad quality that it gets flagged by enough users before being seen by a moderator (right?), and the user will never know. That doesn't make sense.
I suppose there are comments that aren't bad as such, they're intended to be helpful to a certain user at the time of writing, but may not have any long-term value. If anything, I suppose it might make sense to not notify users when these comments are deleted. But then again, notification might make sense, since it might be preferred for users to delete these comments themselves rather than redirecting this work to moderators.
Dependent on some answers to the above, the only option that makes sense to me is to both comment on and flag an inappropriate comment (or should I just trust that at some point a comment flag will get through to a moderator before getting auto-deleted and said moderator will notify the user?).
EDIT:
Another suggestion is automatically picking up on repeatedly being flagged and only notifying users in this case.