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I posted a comment on the following question. My comment was:

You will have to work on your [accept rate](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5234/how-does-accepting-an-answer-work). Currently it's catastrophic. Zero as in a singularity inside a black hole.

This comment was deleted by someone. I would like to know if showing users that don't know how to accept answers is considered as a bad thing so that I stop doing it or if not why would my comment have been deleted and do only moderators are InRole to delete comments.

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  • 2
    Related Related – Rob Hruska Jul 25 '11 at 21:32
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    Also, The Power is yours! :P – Rob Hruska Jul 25 '11 at 21:44
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    See here for a helpful way to comment on a user's acc*pt rate. – Robert Harvey Jul 25 '11 at 23:12
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    At least your original comment included a link that explains what "accept rate" means. Most of them that I see (and all of the ones that I personally flag) don't even go that far. How is someone who doesn't know about accept rate supposed to do in response to comments like that? Answer: Feel like this site is a hostile place with high-rep users who don't want to help. – Cody Gray Jul 26 '11 at 8:24
  • Do I get a notification for deleted comments? Or is it like if it never happened? Even its history gets deleted? – Roberto Sep 30 at 23:27
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There are three ways that a comment can get deleted.

  • A user can delete their own comment.
  • A moderator can delete anyone's comments.
  • Any user with at least 15 reputation can flag a comment, and enough flags can cause the deletion of that comment.

People have been somewhat less tolerant of "accept rate" comments, so it is highly likely that your comment was simply subject to enough flags.

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    I said people have been less tolerant of those comments, I should've qualified that it is usually because of their scathing nature and an otherwise lack of contribution. People need to be taught somehow, but there are many ways to accomplish that. – Grace Note♦ Jul 25 '11 at 21:34
  • please be more precise. What is the well established code in this situation? Ctrl+W or a polite comment? – Darin Dimitrov Jul 25 '11 at 21:36
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    There isn't a well-established code, @Darin. There are multiple approaches. Some people are in fact very creative in how they spur users to accept answers. I'd say politeness usually is helpful. – Grace Note♦ Jul 25 '11 at 21:37
  • OK, so if the community decided so please close my question as an exact duplicate. – Darin Dimitrov Jul 25 '11 at 21:43
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    How can people be "taught" if deletion of comments can be done without the poster's knowledge? Some moderator (or power user) just deleted a bunch of - admittedly chit-chat - comments, but I was only alerted to that by somebody else noticing the deletions and posting a comment about that. One can't learn from a mistake if one is never told it was a mistake... – Marjan Venema Aug 25 '11 at 7:51
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    Is there any way to see who removed your comment? – xaxxon Nov 21 '16 at 11:34
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    enough flags means? How many flags? – Damith Ruwan Jun 29 '17 at 11:41
  • Is there any way to see the deleted comments? – João Antunes Nov 28 '17 at 15:00
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Without giving too much away, there are certain heuristics that make some types of comments a bit, shall we say, easier to flag away than others.

=8-D

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    This is great, another month and I'll have made a real dent in ~11k useless comments. Pity that this doesn't apply to replies like “what do you mean” and ensuing dialogue (which can't be detected automatically). Have you considered reducing the threshold to 0 (i.e. hellbanning these comments)? – Gilles Jul 26 '11 at 15:14
  • @gilles those are all deleted now – Jeff Atwood Aug 1 '11 at 6:32
  • @Jeff The SEDE query is returning a fair few matches again, though not 11K. If - for arguments sake - 'accept rate' is something easy to 'flag away', could 'acceptance rate' also be too? Seems to be almost as common in practice looking at the lastest data dump. – martin clayton Oct 13 '11 at 23:23
  • @martin will do – Marc Gravell♦ Feb 4 '12 at 9:00

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