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A question I posted was closed as duplicate (I think it's worth reopening and in fact I'm trying to get it reopened). Also, a bunch of people made comments and a moderator moved those comments and my replies to chat.

The problem is that between those comments was a link to a possible duplicate. In my opinion, that comment shouldn't have been moved to chat, and I think that there might be more situations were some comments should remain in the post.

Can moderators choose which comments are moved to chat or are all comments always moved automatically as a whole? If they can't choose, shouldn't they have that option? What should I do if a moderator moves to chat some comments that I think should remain in the post?

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It is not straightforward to move some comments and keep others. The option we get is to move all.

Yes, we can do it, but it is involved and time consuming, and to be honest, rarely of value.

Comments were never meant to be permanent, and they tend to make it harder to read posts, so if you ever think there are points in comments that you think should be in posts, the thing to do is put them there.

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    More specifically, a "move comments to chat" operation always puts all the (extant) comments into the chat room. Usually the moderator purges them from the post at the same time. It is possible to then selectively undelete comments, but the mod has to dig through them all. Dec 29, 2016 at 22:30
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    Re: "Comments were never meant to be permanent", judging from the comments I've seen on SO in the last 7 years, I dare say that this is not how comments are perceived & used in practice. Perhaps, to encourage people not to put valuable information into comments, comments should automatically expire & vanish after a set amount of time. Just a thought.
    – stakx
    Jan 5, 2017 at 19:59
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I can't speak for the moderator or whether they can do this or not but I can try to see what the reason was for moving the comments to chat.

One, the linked question was not the question yours was marked duplicate of. It was in fact, a different question. That's also a reason why the user who made that comment isn't seen as one of the 5 people that closed your question. Next, the moderator might have skipped over the comment and proceeded to dump the comments on one chatroom, where chat is valid to take place.

Of course, why the moderator did it is up to me to decide. You will just have to contact him in chat.

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