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Moderators shouldn't be allowed to delete comments. Why can't we use the normal process of flagging to remove offensive comments?
Sometimes, entire discussions get wiped out because a diamond moderator deletes all comments from a post. IMO, this serves no purpose, and unilaterally ends a discussion leaving no trace of it.
Comments should be deleted when necessary.
But
A record of their deletion and the content of what was deleted should be retained so that instances of moderator abuse can be investigated by other moderators.
It is pretty hard to discuss this without an example of the type of contents being removed. I have a confession: I've deleted more than a few comments in my time (feel free to start the downvoting). Comments and sensible levels of discussion can be healthy, but if a thread gets derailed by a swathe of comments that don't relate to answering the question then damage is done. Especially if the comments relate to a situation that is (or has already been) easily fixed, such as duplicates, formatting, etc.
I obviously try to minimise any loss - we wouldn't destroy "all" comments just because a single comment was unacceptable. But sometimes genuinely an entire comment war is just noise.
Do you have a very specific scenario you want to raise? If not, I'm not sure it is an answerable question...
Agreed... I don't really get this behavior. It's become extremely* common, especially here on Meta, and the reasoning doesn't hold up. I could understand quick deletion in the case of spam, or illegal content... But most of the comments I see removed are pretty benign.
The mass-deletion of extensive discussion might make some sense on SOFU, but given that Meta was created in part to provide a place to discuss matters pertaining to SOFU, it hardly seems appropriate to squelch those very discussions.
The system was set up to remove comments (and questions, and answers) that had been flagged n times, for some value of n. If that's not happening fast enough, then perhaps n needs to be reduced; otherwise, it should be left up to the readers to decide what is appropriate (again, excluding things that would create a liability for the site itself such as spam and content that breaks US law).
*Ok, so that's an extreme exaggeration - somewhere over 3% of comments on Meta are force-deleted. Perhaps I've just been more observant lately... Still annoying when it happens, but at these levels probably not worth a complete ban on deletion. It would be nice though, when a conversation is still "warm", if moderators would ease up on the big red button - it may not seem likely that any of us actually have jobs that distract us from continually refreshing the page, but it is frustrating to return and find a dozen or so comments gone without a trace or explanation.
From the perspective of trying to limit drama, and keeping discussions appropriate and on track, I just don't think this is a good idea. Sometimes nonconstructive comments should be removed even if the community hasn't flagged them.
Comments are superfluous. Helpful, but not the main mission of the site. If a comment contains important information then that information should be included in a new answer, or edited into the appropriate answer.
Ideally nothing critical is captured in comments, and should the site lose all comments, then the information it still has should be as useful and helpful (though perhaps not quite as interesting) as with the comments. That's not true, but it is the ideal.
The only time I really use the "comment delete" ability on SU is to clean up migrated posts to SU from SF/SO. I will sometimes go through and remove "belongs on superuser" and similar type comments to clean them up as most of the time, as the question is now on the correct site.
I do read any flagged comments, but just because only one person finds a comment offensive does not mean it needs to be silently deleted. I also do get annoyed when people (comment OP's and moderator removal) remove a comment when their are many responding to that comment. Then you have these broken comment threads that can become very confusing. Sometimes the master wipe comments needs to happen, but not often. I try and read through everything to make sure it can be read clearly after a removal of some sort.
As for the removal of this ability, I would be ok with it's removal if that is what needs to be done. I wanted to mention though how I find it useful in keeping the site clean.
As for meta, I think everyone does a pretty good job here with community moderation and really does not require much of any "moderation". Meta may not have lots of traffic, but the people here are actively involved. I do like seeing honest on-topic positive and negative discussions of the trilogy, the features, the requested features, and overall site issues/suggestions.
It's become extremely common, especially here on Meta -- @shog9
"Extremely common"? Well, let's look at the stats.
On meta to date:
Total comments: 86,789
Deleted comments: 9,174
Deleted comments by owner: 6,011
Deleted comments by non-owner: 3,062
So 3.52% of all comments have been removed by a moderator -- roughly 1 out of every 28 comments on average.
Is that "extremely common" to you?
(for perspective, as of the time I composed this answer, this entire question and all the answers have a grand total of 24 comments.)
We don't want the StackOverflow sites to become the trash heap of the internet. A bunch of comments passing insults, even without offensive words, is still just a bunch of junk that needs to go away.
It's been my experience that anytime there was a wholesale delete on comments from a thread, it was warranted. How many discussions with people like the one we should not name turned into flame wars providing ZERO value to the site other than a distraction?
I think it's great the mods can quickly delete the comments. I'd think they already track this on the back end, so I have no concern here.
I sometimes ask to remove sub-threads of comments because they are of no use. For example, the threads where I exhibit an awful misunderstanding of what is asked for/answered about. After expressing that I got it I sometimes ask to delete this stuff, and I'm glad that the site is not flooded with useless stuff badly understanding users leave there.
So I think that the ability to remove comments should be preserved. It does a lot of good things.
I upvoted it anyway, but I only half-agree and I have a much better solution:
Prohibit them from deleting comments unless they are blatantly offensive (as in really, such as "[expletive] you piece of [expletive] [expletive] [expletive]", not "offensive to the spirit of my ideas" or stuff like that).
Deleting discussions for apparently no reason (as it recently happened here) shouldn't be allowed.
By "prohibit" I mean "tell them not to do it" (and take action against them if they do, but I don't think it will ever go this far).
EDIT: removing "noise" comments (0 votes, no replies, etc) as it sometimes happen on very popular question should be allowed as well. All I want is that discussions don't magically disappear without explanation.
EDIT2: another cool idea would be to allow 10kers to see them anyway.
