2
\$\begingroup\$

I think all of us will make comments on questions suggesting improvements - be it in the form of "Add a schematic" or whatever.

Sometimes this list becomes long after a while as people make small suggestions to clarify the situation - "Add this spec", "Did you do this", etc. As a result you get a wall of comments below a question. I have noticed myself doing this more than once and I think it does not make for structured reading, and once the OP actually implements this or adds the requested information to the question, it does not serve any use. Is it good practice to remove these comments once this happens?

\$\endgroup\$
1
  • \$\begingroup\$ If a comment does not apply anymore it might be nice to remove them, but the added amount of having to track hundreds of questions and to revisit them to check if the comment is now out of date is wasted effort \$\endgroup\$
    – PlasmaHH
    Mar 29 '18 at 10:29
5
\$\begingroup\$

Absolutely. Comments are supposed to be transient. This also includes comments like "Ok, fixed", "Thank you" etc.

However, as PlasmaHH points out, tracking all your comments would be a chore, that's why you can also flag other comments that you find on other questions. I flag everything that has already been incorporated into the main question as obsolete. They are no longer needed.

\$\endgroup\$
2
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ I have had some "obsolete" flags for comments that have been denied in the past, although I really thought it was legit. I'm not sure what is the diamond mods' point of view regarding this. Since they are the only one, I believe, to be able to handle these flags, it most likely adds a lot of burden on their side for little benefits. In fact, I have stopped doing this, except for very specific cases. \$\endgroup\$
    – dim
    Mar 29 '18 at 12:53
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ It's almost like some mod ignores policy at their whim without any oversight. \$\endgroup\$
    – Passerby
    Apr 5 '18 at 3:22
1
\$\begingroup\$

You can flag comments as no longer needed (flag button on left of comment) Make sure you don't create too much work for the moderators and only use this on a needed basis.

enter image description here

\$\endgroup\$
-1
\$\begingroup\$

Be prepared to have your absolutely valid attempts to flag these comments as "no longer needed" to be denied. The standard Stack Exchange process is ignored on EE often.

See: Why are flags on obsolete comments being denied? and Dim's comment above.

You can clean up your own comments, but there is also instances where that's considered vandalism and you can be threatened with bans for it.

My suggestion, is to just leave them alone.

\$\endgroup\$
1
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ If the diamond mod's aren't behaving in the way that SE would expect them to then why wouldn't you bring that discussion with them directly? \$\endgroup\$
    – Voltage Spike Mod
    Apr 5 '18 at 4:25

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .