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All of my comments to this question of mine were deleted.

I didn't think it was site policy for moderators to delete comments, least of all without any warning or notification, but if this is the case, could a moderator please restore the comments I posted in response to other users - namely, Lưu Vĩnh Phúc and LMiller7? Those replies were constructive and directly related to the topic at hand, and I'm not sure why they were ever deleted.

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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It's wholly within site policy to delete comments when they get out of hand. And without warning.

Either those comments currently visible have been restored or you're miscategorising the helpfulness of arguing about question scope for over a dozen still deleted comments as being constructive and about the topic at hand.

The matter got settled in a way and as a result those comments about voting to close or not are obsolete. So they got deleted.

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    The comments in response to the two users I mentioned in the above OP weren't about question scope - they were about the technical details of the question itself, specifically file systems and the convert command, and in direct response to their comments on the same subject. Both of my responses to those users were deleted while theirs are still up. Where's the logic or fairness in that?
    – Hashim Aziz
    Commented Oct 27, 2017 at 3:53
  • @Hashim from the comments privilege page: Comments are temporary "Post-It" notes left on a question or answer.the "when should I comment" section also emphasises that comments should be considered transient and not relied upon to always be kept. If it is important then it should be in the question.
    – Mokubai Mod
    Commented Oct 27, 2017 at 9:19
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    Again, this ignores context of the question. I want to reply to someone's comments in response to my question, regarding the technical details of the question. The moderator in question deleted my comments but not those I was responding to, and appealing to the archaic red tape of how the site should be used in complete (apparently wilful) ignorance of how it's being used by commenters on my question is unfair, hypocritical, and inconsistent... but you're just gonna get back to me with another diatribe about the rules am I right? Why aren't the rules being applied to others' comments?
    – Hashim Aziz
    Commented Oct 27, 2017 at 20:18
  • If you want to affect a reply to someone about clarity of the question edit to improve its overall state and make the clearer question available to everyone reading, not just those who are notified in the comments @has
    – random Mod
    Commented Oct 27, 2017 at 22:29
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Comments can be nuked at any time and for any reason. They are "ephemeral". They are not considered part of the site content per se. This has always been the case.

If you need something that'll stick around a bit more persistently for an extended discussion about a question, pop open a chat room and invite the others to join. As long as the chat doesn't degrade into a topic that is unsuitable for the SE network as a whole, it'll stay up -- even if it's "off topic", as long as it's nothing illicit, the chat can stay.

If you don't need that persistence, then you should be fine with the comments being deleted.

And of course if you are producing constructive knowledge topical to the question at hand, you should attempt to include it in an answer (write one of your own, or suggest an edit to someone else's), or at least edit the question supplying the extra details the OP has provided.

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    Whether this is how comments were originally intended to be used or not, this is not how comments are used in practice across SE, and hasn't been so for a while. Whatever you insist is the case about comments, that's not how the vast majority of users or moderators of the site use them - users post incredibly constructive comments that add to answers, sometimes years after the discussion has largely ended...
    – Hashim Aziz
    Commented Oct 27, 2017 at 1:02
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    ...and if moderators were to take your view to them, a significant amount of valuable information from the site would be permanently lost. Regardless, because I have no interest in trying to grapple with the archaic bureaucracies of this site, are you essentially saying that because a moderator decided to delete my comments responding to users on my question that I now have no recourse and will have to type those comments again? And, by extension, that the same moderator has the freedom to do so as many times as he/she likes without fault?
    – Hashim Aziz
    Commented Oct 27, 2017 at 1:03
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    Maybe other SE sites have that culture where comments are kept (I don't know that to be true or false), but on SU, they're not held in the same regard. Sometimes if a mod sees valuable info in a comment, they'll edit the question or answer with that info and then delete the comments. That's how it belongs, anyway. Anything truly worthwhile in a comment ought to be edited into the Q or an answer. At some point the value of having comments diminishes, aside from bare-minimum discussion to reveal the necessary salient points for proper editing of the Q and A.
    – allquixotic
    Commented Oct 27, 2017 at 3:53
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    Again, you seem to be blindly appealing to the "rules" while ignoring context. I want to reply to someone's comments in response to my question, regarding the technical details of the question. The responsible moderator deleted my comments but not those I was responding to, and appealing to the archaic red tape of how the site should be used in complete (apparently wilful) ignorance of how it's being used by commenters on my question is unfair, hypocritical, and inconsistent. Why are the rules being indiscriminately applied to my comments?
    – Hashim Aziz
    Commented Oct 27, 2017 at 20:23
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    @Hashim I'm with you. What a terrible comment policy. Now I have to memorize which site, between my frequent use of both Stack Overflow and Super User, has the hard-nosed attitude about comments. Maybe if the domains were stackoverflow.com and superuserbtwourcommentpolicyisheavyhanded.com it would be easier.
    – Andrew Keeton
    Commented Feb 7, 2020 at 19:25

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