Too many deletion comments on an answer

Question

The answer in question:

I understand that Bryan is trying to be helpful here, but it just adds to the cacophony when the post makes it to the review queue and has the standard blurbs added. I think Bryan should instead work with Meta to have the blurbs changed, rather than casting this upon the site.

Looking at the user's comment history, it's full of this kind of copy/pasted "delete reviews" without the "delete" part.

And comments like "Possible duplicate of xyz" but without actually flagging the question as dupe.

This is a user for 9 years, but doesn't actually have access to moderation tools, so they're reusing the blurbs they had copy/pasted (or from a browser extension or bookmarklet) for that many years?

Answer 1

Let me explain what is going on with Bryan, since you have mentioned this user.

Bryan spends time each day to review NAA/VLQ posts (that are reported by a bot, Natty in SOBotics). He's already gotten 2,530 helpful flags so he will not get any more badges for this work. His motivation is to improve Stack Overflow, flagging these answers so that review can delete them. The fact you see a lot of comments is not strange, because Stack Overflow gets a lot of NAA each day.

Why do SOBotics members/bots leave comments when they flag?

The reason is that we can notify the user within a few seconds about the problem (user is still online, has just posted the "non" answer). These comments yes are mostly auto-comments (lots of NAA/VLQ), however they have been provided by Shog9, the Community Manager of Stack Exchange. Read more about them and a bot leaving these comment on Can a machine be taught to flag Non-Answers and post comments on them automatically?

What is the result of these auto-comments:

1. OP reads the comment, understands the problem and deletes the post

   

   The result is that we avoid 6 other reviewers spending time on this post.

2. OP reads the comment, understands the problem and edits the post

   The result (if the edit is good), that the post is saved from review and we get a good post on Stack Overflow.

   ^{Most members of SOBotics also tracks flagged posts using GenericBot, hence they will get notified if OP edits and will manually delete comments, retract flags if the edit has fixed the answer}

3. OP does not care and does nothing

   The result is what you have posted. Review continues to post comments onto the post but soon the post will be deleted.

If I see an incorrect comment, and I think Bryan is wrong in a comment, what should I do?

Flag the comment as "no longer needed" or ping Bryan to ask why he think he is correct.

You are also welcome to join the chat room and spend some time reviewing NAA leaving a few hundred comments every day.

^{Affiliation: I'm a room owner of SOBotics}

Answer 2

While I understand your point of view on this, there are two possible outcomes:

1. The post is deleted, and the comments become irrelevant
2. The post passes the LQP review without deletion, which again, make the comments irrelevant but visible.

The post is deleted, and the comments become irrelevant

These are typically new users who post "Link Only" or otherwise low quality answers, and these comments are beneficial in assisting the user to understand what makes a good question. It is preferred that the user fixes their answer prior to it ever hitting the LQP review, which is why the comment is made in the first place.

However, not every user makes revisions to their answers. The people who leave these auto comments are beneficial in the sense that they are trying to prevent the answer from being deleted in the first place. These auto comments leave a detailed explanation on why their post may be deleted, so OP can proactively make changes to prevent that from happening.

The post passes the LQP review without deletion

This can happen for a variety of reasons, such as the question being edited to be make the post a quality answer or the LQP queue being in disagreement with the flag and it passing review.

For starters, the users of the Userscript that is used to post these automatic comments are generally notified in the SOBotics chatroom when the post has been edited. This allows the user who posted this autocomment the ability to re-review the post and determine if the comment should be removed and the flag retracted. Unfortunately, most people do not edit their post after the useful feedback is left, which is why it gets placed in the LQP queue.

If it's determined that the question did pass the review queue¹ and these comments still remain, you are free to flag the comment as "No Longer Necessary". While I agree these comments can be redundant, this is usually the fault of the queue reviewers for leaving a comment when one is already made, not of the user flagging the post to begin with (and allowing the poster to make favorable changes).

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¹ There are many userscripts available on Stackapps that allow you to easily view the timeline on any post. You will be able to see review results and the history of that post.