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I've recently seen a few up-votes on my comments on some answers/posts/questions. However, I've noticed that I never received any reputation from them.

Why is it that we don't receive reputation from up-votes on comments? Or do you get reputation when 10, or 20, people vote up a comment?

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  • Are designed to be temporary not permanent. If you want reputation post full detailed and high-quality answers.
    – Ramhound
    Nov 24, 2015 at 13:47
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    Possible duplicate of Do comment upvotes affect your rep? Nov 24, 2015 at 21:39
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    Technically, the proposed dupe asks does it, and this one asks why.
    – fixer1234
    Nov 25, 2015 at 2:39
  • Comments are a side conversation connected to the main content of a question or answer. A comment is a place where someone might help correct someone else in their efforts or perhaps even add their “2 cents” in a way that might encourage the original poster to adjust their content. Up votes on the comments are meant to draw attention to comments; nothing more and nothing less. Nov 25, 2015 at 16:30

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Comments serve an auxiliary function; they exist to support the all-important questions and answers. The goal is not to generate more comments, but better Q&A.

As such, you should assume that comments will be temporary; if you're putting information into a comment that would be nice to have around long-term, consider trying to work it into the question or an answer instead.

Granting reputation for comment votes would create a perverse incentive to post more of them and keep them around longer, potentially resulting in situations where questions and answers are buried under scores of kibitzing comments - the sorry state so many forums find themselves in.

Also, we'd probably have to implement downvotes.

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    “Also, we'd probably have to implement down votes.” And then comments just become a tool to game the parent system so the whole system just collapses. Nov 25, 2015 at 16:31

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