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Recently, lots of comments (which were not offensive or spam) got deleted from this question: Why doesn't Chewbacca learn to speak Galactic Basic?

And, people are complaining in chat. I also didn't like it. Notably, I have raised comments deletion issues before (and, there's always others who also felt bad). This time, I am proposing to enforce a policy which should override the generic guideline of comments deletion.

Right now, mods are doing whatever they want. Sometimes, they delete a long thread of comments and sometimes they don't. Sometimes, it makes us happy and sometimes it pisses us up. I won't blame mods. The problem is with the rules. I am requesting the community to enforce a policy regarding this.

Please, post your policy you want enforced as answer and let community vote. Here are some examples (not applicable for offensive, spam etc comments):

  • Delete comments only after a week.

  • Delete comments only if the discussion thread crosses x number of comments.

  • Always push comments to a chat room. Never permanently delete.

  • Don't touch the comments. The community has grown far from the initial vision of SO founders. Maybe, their logic isn't working well due to nature of this site.

  • Ask for consent of the post author before deleting comments on it.

  • Discuss in chat before deleting comments.

  • ____________________ (fill in the blanks with your creativity)

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  • 3
    +1 because I like the idea of less comment deletion, even though I don't think any of the specific possibilities you suggest would always work, and can't think of a hard-and-fast rule that would.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Jan 1, 2016 at 18:36
  • @randal'thor Maybe, a mixture would work. BTW, these are just examples.
    – user931
    Jan 1, 2016 at 19:03
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    you can scratch everything off your list that says 'chat' since the vast majority of the site's users have never and probably will never go there. Otherwise, I'm not convinced there's anything wrong with the current system. Seeing long, tedious-to-read comment threads makes me sad.
    – KutuluMike
    Jan 1, 2016 at 20:12
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    I think more comments need to be deleted. We say they're ephemeral, but when they stay around so long and people get attached and don't do anything with them, nuke 'em!
    – user31178
    Jan 1, 2016 at 22:31
  • Also, if my chat comment about the comments being deleted was construed as a complaint, I didn't mean it as such. There was a silly comment, my "I... AM... GROOT..." comment, and your "AURG WAAARG" type comment. I was being humorous, and had expected comments to devolve. I just expected to been awake before mods nuked 'em. Not a big deal.
    – user31178
    Jan 1, 2016 at 22:33
  • @MikeEdenfield "Seeing long, tedious-to-read comment threads makes me sad" - well, nobody's making you read them! :-)
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Jan 2, 2016 at 0:04
  • @randal'thor the premise of the question was that current policy makes at least one person happy sometimes and angry others. I merely provided a counterpoint.
    – KutuluMike
    Jan 2, 2016 at 1:08
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    Or instead of some arbitrarily made up fixed rule, just simply apply sane reasoning about when to delete comments, together with the general rule of SE comments not being supposed to be a permant source of important information in the first place and eligible for deletion at any point in time. So uh, well, basically the policy that's currently applied.
    – TARS
    Jan 2, 2016 at 2:12

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Moderators get flagged if a certain number of comments are made in a specific amount of time.

That came up, and I browsed the comments. I didn't see anything crucial, and they'd wandered off topic from the original question, so I deleted them all.

Here are some other examples:

Why was my comment deleted?

What happened to my comment?

Why was my comment correcting terminology deleted?

Why did my comment get deleted from this answer?

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    I didn't blame mods with this meta question. You did what you thought was right as per policies. I just want to make the policy more strict and less rude.
    – user931
    Jan 1, 2016 at 19:02
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    @SS-3 There's nothing "rude" about the current policy anyway.
    – TARS
    Jan 2, 2016 at 2:13
  • @TARS Yes, it is rude because I always feel bad after comment threads are deleted on my posts.
    – user931
    Jan 2, 2016 at 2:46
  • @SS-3 Well, then don't feel bad, you have no reason to. Problem solved. Doesn't make it rude just because you chose to intepret it that way.
    – TARS
    Jan 2, 2016 at 3:01
  • @TARS This logic sucks. Go fire a racist statement at someone and tell them not to interpret that way.
    – user931
    Jan 2, 2016 at 3:23
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    @SS-3 Well, if you don't fire a racist statement in the first place at all and he's still insulted, then it's not actually your problem (to go with that unfitting analogy). But whatever, you seem to have quite a different view of comments than the SE system has, so be it.
    – TARS
    Jan 2, 2016 at 3:27
  • @TARS It's not just me. Lots of people don't like it.
    – user931
    Jan 2, 2016 at 3:29
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    @SS-3 I think it's difficult to say people agree with you when your question is currently at -7.
    – AncientSwordRage Mod
    Jan 2, 2016 at 10:01
  • LOL. That's correct, but it's possible people don't want change. Such inertia has always crippled the development.
    – user931
    Jan 2, 2016 at 11:54
  • @AncientSwordRage It does have seven upvotes too.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Jan 3, 2016 at 21:33
  • @AncientSwordRage That's more faulty logic. I don't think that followers of this site's meta are indicative of the site's typical user. And "Well, then don't feel bad, you have no reason to. Problem solved." is really skirting brevity to the point of curtness. Perhaps your understanding of what's rude and what's not isn't as clear as you think it is.
    – 1252748
    Jan 4, 2016 at 1:24

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