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When a moderator nominee withdraws their nomination, comments on that post remain present in the user's recent activity list.

This is in direct contrast to comments on deleted normal posts being hidden from recent activity lists (I understand that withdrawn nominations may not be the same as deleted posts in the system).

Comments on withdrawn nominations are also visible via /posts/<nomination_post_id>/comments, although that is less accessible.

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  • I wonder if comments on destroyed nominations remain... Shall we test this? – Shog9♦ Apr 9 '15 at 3:09
  • @Shog9 Jeremy might be willing to help if you need a test case, ask him in chat. You're welcome to mess with mine too as long as you know it can be restored. – Jason C Apr 9 '15 at 3:12
  • Solution: don't post silly comments on nominations... ;) – Shadow The Princess Wizard Jun 15 '16 at 5:59
  • @Shog9 I think the nomination in meta.stackexchange.com/questions/280270/… was destroyed (not sure, though) – muru Jun 15 '16 at 6:00
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I just saw another case of this. A controversial nomination attracted a lot of comments; some were very rude and were deleted, and then the nomination was withdrawn. The comments that were actually deleted are, as we would expect, gone from user profiles, but the comments that remained at the time of the withdrawal are still there in the profiles even though the post they're attached to is deleted. It would be better for all involved in a controversy if things that aren't visible on the election page could also be out of sight elsewhere. Even as a moderator I can't see the withdrawn nomination -- but everybody can see the comments. That feels off.

To compound the problem, moderators need to be super-careful about curating comments in an election, lest there be an appearance of bias. So borderline comments on nomination posts can stick around longer than similarly-borderline comments elsewhere on the site.

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5

So, the bit that makes this weird is that withdrawn nominations aren't deleted.

You can easily observe this by visiting the nominee's profile - not just the comments they left on their withdrawn nomination, but the nomination itself will be clearly visible in their activity list, with the oh-so-descriptive "wiki" indicator next to it.

There is a way to actually delete them, but normally this is reserved for overtly abusive nominations. Everything else remains visible, just not on the nomination page.

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  • Oh, huh. I thought removed nominations were actually deleted, like "removed" answers (and questions) are, but now that you point it out, yes I can see that. It's a little weird in that case that moderators can't get to it directly; if I follow the post link from one of the remaining comments I get a 404, so if we did want to remove any of those lingering comments, there doesn't seem to be a way to do it. – Monica Cellio May 22 '18 at 16:11
  • That's the tip of the iceberg, @Monica - there's no real support for linking to comments on nominations even when they're visible! This is the root cause for lack of flagging, voting, etc. – Shog9♦ May 22 '18 at 16:20

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