Do negative comments towards a work follow our guidelines?

Question

Fairly often, I'll see a comment (or line in question or answer) that is unabashedly critical of the work in question in a way that I would not consider constructive.

Some examples of how these interactions usually go:

"Q: Why does [event] happen in [work]?" "Commenter: Because [work] is awful and no thought went into it."

"Q: How did [character] learn to [do thing]?" "Commenter: [Character] is just a Mary Sue."

I generally flag these comments as either unfriendly or not needed, depending on the specifics of the statement. These flags are accepted about 50% of the time, indicating that there is not a consensus on how they should be handled.

I am not advocating banning all criticism of works in all contexts. For example, if a work's objectively troubled production has been noted to affect plot details, those could be relevant details. However, overly frequent "this story sucks!" responses seem like they could scare off new users who are excited to learn more about their favorite work.

Answer 1

I would argue for a light touch. On the one hand comments are less important - and more ephemeral - than answers and receive less protection; but on the other hand we keep relatively low-value answers as long as they try to be answers, and comments are frequently used as signposts and clues to potential answers, so they don't even need to be as complete or fully-formed as answers.

Since comments are on a continuum (with multiple axes); there are going to be some comments that are obviously not appropriate ("The movie is crap, and you're crap for liking it."), some that provide insightful clarification of the question and some that essentially answer the question, but lack proper attribution or sources. (And some are just outright funny, which is still, in my opinion, useful because it can be a healthy reminder not to take ourselves so seriously.)

This question is about the murky subset deep in the middle, and my feeling is that it suggests going too far in policing the tone of the comments. Under the guidelines presented, "JKR is bad at maths" would be removed, even though it is (apparently) sometimes actually true and even acknowledged by the author.

To address the question specifically, there are cases where "no thought went into it" is canonically true, as some authors have admitted they rushed a work so much that glaring errors slipped in. It may not be flattering, but it may still be true; to insist it's "not constructive" is at least as much of a statement of opinion as the question accuses the commenter of making. (Similarly, "Mary Sue" is a well-known trope because it really does happen, and it's a useful shorthand for "overly idealized author avatar;" such a comment may be posted simply to reference an argument that has been hashed out elsewhere.)

Obviously any comment that makes what might be a contentious claim would be better if it included support, but that's a standard we don't even hold answers to. (Of course it's not great form to post answers as comments either, but if one lacks the time, or inclination, to chase down the necessary references, I'd argue that it belongs as a comment.)

And yes, in the SE system comments are expendable. I'm always a bit flattered if I revisit a question from months prior and find that a comment of mine has been deemed worthy of keeping around. But comments are also non-recoverable once deleted, so to the extent that a comment has potential value as a breadcrumb on the trail to a possible answer (even if it's an answer that you might not like) I would argue in favour of keeping it around.