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I've made a few comments on an old post, which was (unfortunately, IMHO) closed as OT.

Some appended to some answers, trying to contribute and provide more info and evidence on them, but another comment I posted under the current top answer of the question.

Which happens to make some statements that are not true.

I thought it was important to point that out to whoever might stumble upon that question again in the future. I can provide evidence that it's not true, and honestly anyone could easily verify that, since it only involves a standard feature in every Windows for more than 10 years.

The original poster of the question however, did not like my comment clarifying that his answer was stating something untrue. He proceeded to call me a troll, and somehow even deleted my comment.

I made a second comment, saying that I wasn't being a troll, pointed out my other comments on the other answers, and said that I believed that behaviour was counter-productive.

This comment was AGAIN deleted.

Sorry if I'm missing something obvious, and I hope I'm asking this in the right place. I'm somewhat new here but anyone can check my activity and verify that I'm definitely not a troll.

Is this to be expected? If not, how should I deal with this?

Adjunct: Also, the relevant question was closed due to "You are asking an off-topic question (software shopping)." which it honestly was not. The author described a problem and asked if there was a feasible way to solve it. (Because maybe it wasn't even technically possible.) As it turns out, there is a way, and it's native to Windows, which have more than 70% of all desktops user base. I don't see how that's off topic. Specially considering I've arrived there more than two years after it was asked looking for a solution to the exact same problem.

PS: I already flagged his comment calling me a troll, giving the relevant info and reason in the 'ticket' for the moderator that would come to check my flag. Next time I checked the answer, his comment had been deleted, but that was it. (My comment was already deleted before that.)

And his answer is still the top answer on the question, and is saying untrue things.

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    Could the downvoter care to explain why? I'm just trying to understand how is this supposed to work so I can better participate in the community.
    – Vinícius M
    Commented Jul 19, 2018 at 22:38
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    In the future when you encounter an incorrect answer you should downvote it. As for your comments, only moderators and the comment author, can delete a comment. This isn’t censorship, if they were deleted by a moderator, it’s because they were viewed as not being necessary. This isn’t a slight against you. You simply shouldn’t have submitted the comment in question.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jul 20, 2018 at 4:25
  • 5 downvotes on this post is a case in point that someone is trying to bully and harrass the person posting this question and the bully even asked his friends to downvote here, as a measure of support. newcomers aren't so keen on downvoting anything. We can't see who all downvoted, but anyone who can see should analyze and question those downvoters. It is a gang like activity.
    – VSRawat
    Commented Feb 3, 2019 at 15:56
  • If someone is going to downvote a question, or answer for that matter, please comment as to why you're downvoting. StackExchange auto prompts you to add a comment, which you must manually bypass, so it's clearly purposeful. Personally, down-voting shouldn't be allowed without an accompanied comment explaing why, as that's the only way the question or answer can be corrected. If one doesn't want to provide a comment, the individual has no business down-voting.
    – JW0914
    Commented Aug 6, 2019 at 12:13

1 Answer 1

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Sometimes it's not so much what you say as how you say it.

And sometimes, it's both.

Here's your first comment:

This is just plain wrong. I can't add a new answer because the thread is (wrongfully IMO) closed as off-topic. However Rob's answer addresses the problem EXACTLY. And it can yield significant results. I've made a comment on answer giving a little bit more detail on that in case anyone's interested. I'd would also be happy to elaborate any further questions.

This... comes on a bit strong. But its cardinal sin lies in failing to explain how the answer is wrong. You assert that it is, but don't explain why you think this beyond directing readers to another answer. So at best, your comment doesn't really add anything; at worst, it's kinda off-putting to read.

The author replied as follows:

Rob's answer is "DISK" compression... not file-compression. There is a HUGE difference. Disk compression requires you commit your entire disk (or partition) to being compressed, and takes a very long time to accomplish. It also cannot begin the compression process without at least some free space. I would ask you to stop trolling.

This contrasts the technical aspects of the two answers. But, then it ends with the "stop trolling" comment, which is again a bit much. A moderator followed up by deleting both comments as unnecessarily inflammatory.

Here's your second comment, posted shortly before the author's comment was removed:

Just because he said "click the drive letter" instead of "click the folder/file"?. NTFS compression can very well be done in specific files only, or specific folders. Just open CMD and type "compact /?". Or right click any folder on any Windows pc -> Properties -> Advanced -> Compress files(...). I even specified in my personal use case - I used it to compress a single 1TB file in my 2TB drive, and managed to regain 41GBs of space. It's beyond me why would you call me a 'troll'. And apparently you even somehow deleted my comment, ludicrous censorship. This is harmful to the community.

Again, we get some germane technical details... followed by inflammatory remarks. Note that by this time, the question had been reopened - so you could've just posted an answer. So a different moderator came by and removed this latter comment as well.

Moral of the story? Try to stick to the facts; avoid inflammatory language yourself and avoid responding in kind when you see it in others - nobody's gonna look at a thread like this and decide it's ok because both sides were doing it, they're gonna just find it twice as off-putting.

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    Just for clarification: >failing to explain how the answer is wrong. I explained that. I even said so: "I've made a comment on answer giving a little bit more detail on that in case anyone's interested." I believe I typed "a comment on @Rob's answer", but my mistake if I didn't. It was a comment on the answer right below, which was saying that it was possible (in contrast to the "not possible" above). I described precisely what I had just done to solve my issue, and at the same time, showing it was not impossible. And I even offered to elaborate. I just didn't post it above as well.
    – Vinícius M
    Commented Jul 19, 2018 at 23:00
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    There's the thing - your goal was to provide a hint to folks reading the top answer that they should keep reading... But to do that, you've gotta give 'em a reason to do so (beyond "this doesn't help", a conclusion they'd probably arrive at on their own). Something like, "I found myself in this position and was able to solve it using a technique akin to that described in [Rob's answer](link)" would suffice.
    – Shog9
    Commented Jul 19, 2018 at 23:03
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    Because I believed if I posted more or less the same things on multiple answers, it could come off as spam. And also because the "comment" doesn't let you type very much. =/ And about the question being opened 'at the second time', I really really missed that. As I said before - I'm somewhat new here. Nevertheless, thank you for the clarification and thank you for the advice. I'll try to be more 'lovely' and 'harmless' (?) in the future. English is not my first, so maybe that helped offput my sense of what was acceptable.
    – Vinícius M
    Commented Jul 19, 2018 at 23:04
  • No worries, we all make mistakes.
    – Shog9
    Commented Jul 19, 2018 at 23:07
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    If you wouldn't mind - I keep re-reading my very first comment and I really really don't feel like it is that much "strong". Really. Would you find it alright if I changed only the very first sentence to "I'm sorry, but this is not right."? See, in my mind I had already 'backed up' the correct answer (Rob's). But since that was the first answer on the question and it contained information I knew for a fact to be wrong, I thought maybe that could 'send away' people who'd come by with the same issue.
    – Vinícius M
    Commented Jul 19, 2018 at 23:14
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    And I thought maybe the author himself could be reasonable, actually take the 20 seconds it would take to read my comment on Rob's answer, understand that it was possible - maybe even test it out himself if he didn't believe me, and then make a change to his own answer, in order not to spread misinformation to the community. But oh well.. I guess this is OT now. I'll accept your answer.
    – Vinícius M
    Commented Jul 19, 2018 at 23:16
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    By my reading, your comment is trying to express six different thoughts, and as a result none of them get to be fleshed out; it comes across to me then as reactionary, hot-headed.
    – Shog9
    Commented Jul 19, 2018 at 23:18
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    Try this as an exercise, @ViníciusM: pick one goal for your comment, just one idea that you feel needs to be expressed. And try to express it as clearly as possible and as succinctly as you can muster.
    – Shog9
    Commented Jul 19, 2018 at 23:18

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