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I have seen many new users posting comments as an answer, which is wrong. Some new users have good knowledge but they can't add comments because they don't have 50 reputation.

I agree that some users post comments that are not related to the topic; to deal with that, other users can raise "not an answer" flags.

My question is: Why don't we provide a limit of 1 or 2 comments to the new users on a daily basis?

To help new users write more useful comments the community can give some suggestions to the new user in additional comments.

I read "Why do I need 50 reputation to comment? What can I do instead?", but it doesn't prevent many new users from writing comments in the answer section because they need more information in order to offer an answer.

Suggestions:

  1. New users should be permitted a limited number of comments.
  2. The community can give suggestions to a new user for avoiding wrong comments.
  3. The comments become visible after a review and acceptance by another user with enough reputation.
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    Does this answer your question? Why do I need 50 reputation to comment? What can I do instead? – Mark Kirby Jan 10 '20 at 9:08
  • @MarkKirby This is a Serious problem from the last 2 days I observed 5 new users asked comments in the answer section. And in this question, I asked for a suggestion. The community has to think more about this. – Naresh Kumar Jan 10 '20 at 9:21
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    I disagree it is a serious problem, it is a minor inconvenience at best but that has nothing to do with if your question is a duplicate or not. If you are going to bring this up, yet again, it would be better to at least offer some kind of suggestion to fix the problem and make this an actual feature request, rather than just telling people they should discuss it. FYI not my downvote. – Mark Kirby Jan 10 '20 at 9:27
  • How you say writing comments in answer, not a serious problem, it will increase no of answers. I have given already 2 suggestion, Community has to give suggestions to click on the add comment button to a new user. And the community has to think about a limited comment. – Naresh Kumar Jan 10 '20 at 9:32
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    And why wouldn't spammers use this to post spam everywhere? – Robert Longson Jan 10 '20 at 9:38
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    SE is to worried that comments will be used to hide spam and will never let 1 rep users leave comments. The solution that exists right now is to flag the answer as not an answer and mods have a button that will convert the answer to a comment, if it has value. Your suggestion of "give them one or two comments" is flawed because they may comment, get half a response and then not be able to follow that up because of the limit, leaving them and the OP confused and worse off than if they just never commented in the first place. – Mark Kirby Jan 10 '20 at 9:38
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    "How you say writing comments in answer, not a serious problem" because it is so rare, five in two days is nothing on sites that get tens of thousands of questions a day. – Mark Kirby Jan 10 '20 at 9:43
  • If a 1-rep user posts an answer that was clearly meant to be a comment, a moderator can always just convert it to a comment. I see it happen all the time. – F1Krazy Jan 10 '20 at 9:46
  • @RobertLongson for avoiding spam Community will allowing the comments but require a review and acceptance by an another experienced user. – Naresh Kumar Jan 10 '20 at 10:00
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    There's too many comments (or not enough people) to review them. – Robert Longson Jan 10 '20 at 10:04
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    I edited to improve the readability of the question and clarify its potential as a duplicate to the one suggested - that doesn't imply that I think we should implement this. – Rob Jan 10 '20 at 11:23
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I don't think this would be a wise change

One specific way this would immediately be abused would be by spammers. The moment which new users are able to comment with 1 reputation, we are going to start getting spammers using them. And the 5-comment limitation doesn't really affect them because spammers generally operate on complex networks with multiple accounts.

The other more subtle way this could go wrong is in everyday use of comments. Comments are already (no data to support this, just intuition) probably the most misused feature on this site. This has a lot of reasons including (IMO) flaws in the design of the SE systems and new users mistaking this site for a traditional forum. Regardless of the reasons though, users new and old already routinely use comments in ways they are not designed to be used. And, generally, these fall to the moderators to clean up. Putting the privilege behind a reputation gate at least gives some good chance that perhaps the user has been exposed to correct comment usage and other site systems/norms before being allowed to comment.

It is worth noting that new users are already allowed to comment on the most important thing that they be able to: their own question and answers underneath it.

I don't think the review queue idea really mitigates any of this. On larger sites such as SO, they already have so many comments and not enough people doing reviews. Adding a review queue that is full of spam and other comments of varying value would just result in more work for the community for little gain, and likely would be more confusing for new users than saying you just can't comment at all.

I don't see how expanding this privilege would do anything except create more work for moderators/community with little to no positive gain for the site as a whole.

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    Imagine some undesirable users created multiple profiles just to comment. Is it okay if users have to earn at least 10 reputation to comment at a limited rate? – Ṃųỻịgǻňạcểơửṩ Jan 10 '20 at 17:58
  • @MulliganReinstatingMonica The decision would probably have to be made with some sort of data. Eg how many users at that level are trying to comment, etc. The exact threshold at which privileges are gained could probably be tweaked if there was enough logic/data behind it. – Rubiksmoose Jan 10 '20 at 18:10

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