Comments are constantly disappearing

Question

Why are comments constantly being deleted? Sometimes I write a comment and someone has deleted it less than an hour later. I think people are going overboard with the comment deleting. I don't really like it -- I feel like it's censoring in a way.

As we all know, there are many different types of comments. There is the comment-answer, which I don't like and have protested before. There's repartee between two or three users -- usually meaningless, but I personally enjoy reading and writing such comments. There are interesting tangential comments, such as anecdotes or links or a digression of some sort. To me, these comments make me feel like I'm reading an annotated poem or book. I enjoy reading them and feel they enrich the question.

I'm wondering if people agree that certain types of comments are more valuable than others and ought to be preserved -- in that they're not deleted.

Answer 1

From How do comments work?

Comments are temporary "Post-It" notes left on a question or answer. You should not expect them to be around forever. Once a clarification has been made, an edit added to the post to include new information, or the issue in the comment is otherwise resolved, it is subject to deletion. In reality, many obsolete or chatty comments remain untouched due to the high volume of comments posted, but this does not mean that they can't or shouldn't be deleted in the future.

Yes, we know that it is off-putting to people to delete discussion in the comments. That doesn't mean that it's the wrong thing to do, especially on a site where a good portion of the community isn't fluent in English and really needs us to vote so they can tell what is credible.

You will notice that it tends to be comments directly under the question that get moderated most heavily, because that's where people tend to put things that seem like answers. Comments under the question also push answers, which are far more valuable, down the page where they are less likely to be read and voted on.

Often comment discussions cause authors to disengage from their question, because what learner wouldn't prefer a one-on-one discussion to an answer written to be useful to more than just one person? Once they have their answer they move on to other things, and ELL still doesn't have a proper answer that will show up in a search engine.

Comments under an answer ideally should be addressed by editing the answer to either incorporate the information or address the concerns (as Nathan already mentioned), but that doesn't always happen. Because the comments under an answer can add valuable context or additional information and they do less harm than comments directly under the question, they are often left alone. That should NOT be interpreted as "go ahead and chat in comments as long as you do it under an answer" though.

I haven't checked with the rest of the moderator team, but if anyone would like a chat room set up for discussion on an answer, I am happy to oblige - just leave a flag for a moderator on one of the comments or ping me (type @ColleenV and your message) in ELL's main chat room Language Overflow and let me know.

Answer 2

There's repartee between two or three users -- usually meaningless, but I personally enjoy reading and writing such comments.

It's worth pointing out again an underlying philosphy of the Stack Exchange:

We're a little bit different from other sites. Here's how:

Ask questions, get answers, no distractions

This site is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat.

This is found on the first page of the Tour on every Stack Exchange.

For everyone who "enjoys the meaningless repartee between two or three users," there are other users who find these side conversations to be distracting clutter if not downright annoying.

Many of these comments get removed after fellow members of the community have flagged them for moderation attention. There are three preset reasons for flagging, and one of those three reasons is:

This comment is outdated, conversational or not relevant to this post. (emphasis added)

If you think moderation team is getting too heavy-handed with their deletion of comments, there's a good chance that the root of that mentality is other members who are getting more persistent in their flagging.

Remember, for many in the community, part of the appeal of the Stack Exchange is its free-from-distractions directness. You may not agree with that mentality personally, but it's an important part of what helped SE grow into what it is today.

Answer 3

My personal answer (or recommendation) is just to "get used to it".

I once complained why mods delete all entire comments (my comments), but the CoC says comments are temporary, so which means, comments stay there just for a period of time, which means according to CoC, they are destined to be deleted.

As we all know, there are many different types of comments. There is the comment-answer, which I don't like and have protested before. There's repartee between two or three users -- usually meaningless, but I personally enjoy reading and writing such comments. There are interesting tangential comments, such as anecdotes or links or a digression of some sort. To me, these comments make me feel like I'm reading an annotated poem or book. I enjoy reading them and feel they enrich the question.

Yes, but for the reason I stated above whatever the kind of these comments are, how valuable they are, they are doomed to be deleted, you have only one choice to swallow the fact.

I personally now am accustomed to this practice now so that I don't wonder at all if tens of comments are flushed suddenly by mods or whoever they are.

However I wish mods create a standard which comments are deleted or not deleted, because sometimes some comments are kept in the line as they were.