Mass-deleting of comments threads

Question

It seems this has been going on for awhile, especially in the last several months: mass-deleting of the discussions of relevant details that often arise in the comments on questions and/or answers. I had thought that these were valuable as part of the content, and that the questions and answers are worth significantly less without them.

What is worse is that I'm not aware of a way users can see what used to be in comments (nor, by the way, what used to be the content of their own questions).

I'm wondering what is gained from erring in favor of deletion for comments-conversations. It's not very helpful beyond a tiny aesthetic improvement to the site, and it's certainly not in keeping with the Jewish tradition of layer upon layer of "commentary" on every word.

Let me put another spin on this: what is truly gained by erring towards deletion of comments? As for what is lost, I can say that this has been a problem for me in understanding answers to my own questions several times in the last week alone.

Answer 1

You can always see the edit history of a question or answer by clicking the edited link that appears next to the time stamp of how long ago it was edited. Here is an example.

Regarding comments, for better or worse that is the general stack exchange view - they are transient in nature and should not be viewed as a permanent record. Therefore moderators feel freer to delete them even if they weren't flagged by users, and even when flagged, it is a matter of moderator discretion - there is no review queue for users of any reputation to vote on keeping them or not.

I agree, however, that many times comments provide useful background and tangents that can better elucidate where the question or answer is coming from, even after they become obsolete. I would encourage moderators to move comments to chat over deletion. However, my understanding is that they don't have push-of-the button tools to do that, and for a volunteer position, I understand if they don't just feel like copying over a bunch of comments.

So I would encourage them to ask for easy moving of comments to chat instead of deletion as part of the stack exchange feature set. I would even allow for a link on every question or answer to just say: Chat about this and let comments move over there as the moderators fancy. This way it isn't on-site clutter (that is the view of comments in Stack Exchange for better or worse), but it is easily and clearly associated with the relevant question or answer. Such a feature would probably prevent some discussions from starting out in comments and would instead jump straight to chat. (Of course that would have to preserve the ability to ping the OP in that chat).

Answer 2

From the description of the "comment everywhere" privilege:

When should I comment?

You should submit a comment if you want to:

• Request clarification from the author;
• Leave constructive criticism that guides the author in improving the post;
• Add relevant but minor or transient information to a post (e.g. a link to a related question, or an alert to the author that the question has been updated).

Another common use of comments on Mi Yodeya is, as Yishai and Monica Cellio noted in comments on this answer,

unsourced answers and link-only answers… Offering a lead for prospective answers ("$source has something to say about this" etc)…. If somebody turns them into an answer those comments then become obsolete.

Continuing the quotation from the privilege description:

When shouldn't I comment?

Comments are not recommended for any of the following:

• Suggesting corrections that don't fundamentally change the meaning of the post; instead, make or suggest an edit;
• Answering a question or providing an alternate solution to an existing answer; instead, post an actual answer (or edit to expand an existing one);
• Compliments which do not add new information ("+1, great answer!"); instead, up-vote it and pay it forward;
• Criticisms which do not add anything constructive ("-1, see previous comments you scallywag!"); instead, down-vote (and provide or up-vote a better answer if appropriate);
• Secondary discussion or debating a controversial point; please use chat instead;
• Discussion of community behavior or site policies; please use meta instead.

I will frequently delete comments that stray from the above guidelines, especially if there are many comments on a single page or some have strayed far from the guidelines.

I will also delete comments that were posted to request clarification from the post author or leave constructive criticism, but which have already been acted on (so the post was edited in light of them) and are obsolete. That's the whole point of that kind of comment: to improve the post. The post should be edited to account for the comment, and then the comment can be deleted — and should be, to reduce clutter. As slhck wrote:

Imagine you're a random visitor from a search engine. Would you want the interesting/helpful stuff to stay somewhere buried in the comments?

(That's why I've deleted the aforementioned comments of Yishai's and Monica Cellio's.)