Are there different rules for comments in meta?

Question

Some moderators on some sites are very... religious in purging any comment on any post that isn't asking for clarification or directly suggesting an improvement. These very same moderators are also typically chatty in comments on meta posts.

I know there is a lot of debate on comment moderation, especially the role it plays on a particular site, but this double standard bothers me. Is there a different standard site-wide for meta comments? If so, why is there a different standard? If comments are beneficial to arriving at good conclusions in meta, shouldn't they also be useful on the main sites?

Answer 1

Yes, meta absolutely is different from main sites with respect to comment usage. It's not a "double standard", they're just different situations.

One of the primary purposes of meta is discussion, and its audience is site members. This is even official: all meta posts require one of a handful of tags, and one of those choices is discussion. It's totally natural for meta to end up involving a fair bit of discussion in comments. Those comments don't really cause much trouble if left around, and can even be useful for future users who want to see all the various details of everyone's thoughts. It's also simply not that formal. When the whole audience is site users, chattiness among site users is no big deal.

On the other hand, on the main site, the audience is... everyone. The aim is to create things that are useful for future readers, including those coming in from search engines. The page needs to be useful and concise, for people who just want an answer to a question, not a bunch of side discussions between people they don't know.

That means that comments on the main site really should be focused on improving the posts they're on. That means suggesting improvements, requesting clarification, and so on. The exact implementation of this general idea does vary from site to site, largely because some sites are prone to really large comment discussions, so they try to shut things down quickly, while other sites don't have as many issues, so they tolerate a bit. (On top of that, implementation of policies may be uneven - it relies on flagging and moderator action, so some things get noticed and addressed, while others don't.) If you see this being enforced fairly strictly, that doesn't mean it's religion, it's just the community and its mods doing their best to flag and handle comment discussions to keep the questions/answers useful for future readers.

On top of all of this, in many cases, main-site comments that aren't suggesting improvements or asking for clarification often aren't actually helping arrive at good conclusions. If things are turning into generall chattiness or heated debates or tangential discussions, that's not building consensus. This is why you'll often see suggestions to simply write a different answer if you disagree.

Finally, I would note that meta is not completely removed from these rules. If things do get excessively chatty (or heated or tangential) mods will often step in just as they would on the main site. But things can go a bit farther before they're too chatty/tangential than they could on the main site.

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As for sources for meta being more flexible... well, I would really try to look at this as more of a description, and an absence of a policy for strict enforcement. This is simply how things tend to work on meta. It is that way because no one's ever seen much reason to try to change it significantly. The fact that you can't find meta posts saying "I think we need to crack down on comments on meta!" is the proof.

If you want something "official", there's a note on tone in one of the answers to the general Meta FAQ, which is in turn linked from the main FAQ:

Meta has a reputation for being more... relaxed than the other Stack Exchange sites. Jokes and non-serious posts that would be swiftly deleted on the other sites have been welcomed here in the past and are sometimes still tolerated today, though not to the degree that they were before.

But again, that's more of a convenient short description of how meta works than an absolute statement of policy.

Answer 2

I am not convinced that there is a different standard being applied to comment moderation between the two types of site (Meta and Main).

However, Meta is different in that we have a discussion tag that means some comments will be about clarifying that discussion rather than simply clarifying the question/answer.

The standards are still high but the guidelines differ in at least that critical aspect.

Answer 3

You use the word “chatty” when you describe the comments posted in the aforementioned unnamed Meta sites. The Help Center doesn't exactly explain what is meant when it uses the word in describing flagging comments for moderator attention, but such can be inferred from context:

no longer needed - the comment is obsolete, chatty, or otherwise unnecessary

There ought be a bit of leeway in Meta, especially when posted in a discussion situation. However, if the comment is entirely off–topic or simply is cluttering the discussion, then you should flag it as such, of course.

If you think that the moderators are not doing their jobs, then that's a different question entirely.
Doesn't seem to be your complaint, though.

Furthermore, even though many of the Stack Exchange sites prefer to have a clinical and almost sterile polish, people operate on the human aspect of interactions. Less so in Meta than in Chat, but a little humor and personal reconnoitering helps hold a Stack Exchange site together and keep people open and communicating. That's what the Meta sites are meant to do, after all.