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I had commented a lot on a post but all of a sudden a moderator moved all my comments to a chat room.

How can I avoid this to happen?

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  • The crucial question here is: Why would you want to do that anyway? Except for the automatic notification of the post’s author, chat is superior to comments in terms of functionality.
    – Wrzlprmft Mod
    Commented Feb 12, 2018 at 14:44
  • @Wrzlprmft "Chat is superior" two cents: 1. especially here, some people seem to be allergic to chat and the exchange dies quickly 2. when browsing old Qs I stumbled often over links to a chat that then just showed me Cmd Riker with a funny hat – "chat is there forever" doesn't seem correct [and who goes searching for anything in "chats?"]
    – LаngLаngС
    Commented Feb 25, 2018 at 22:22
  • @LangLangC I do sometimes ;)
    – Takkat
    Commented Feb 25, 2018 at 22:28
  • @Takkat Is that also a kind of Google bomb? ;) – But srsly: I often read "chat's forever", in your links I read quite a number are sched for deletion quickly. Is that SE-wide?
    – LаngLаngС
    Commented Feb 25, 2018 at 22:46
  • @LangLangC: 1. Well, unless they have a reason for this and it isn’t really due to the label, there is not much that anybody can do about this. 2. Can you give me an example? This should not be the default. Rooms get automatically frozen after a few weeks, but they are still visible. 3. and who goes searching for anything in "chats?" – You cannot really search comments either.
    – Wrzlprmft Mod
    Commented Feb 26, 2018 at 6:35
  • @LangLangC The third link in my Google search above contains this from chat FAQ: Inactive Rooms with less than 15 messages will be deleted after 7 days. Comments we moved to chat usually are more than 15 messages (flags star with >20) but sometimes the comment-abuse continues on other posts from the same Q&A. We then may move comments earlier.
    – Takkat
    Commented Feb 26, 2018 at 8:06

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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There is a network wide policy for comments to be only temporary notices:

Comments are temporary "Post-It" notes left on a question or answer. They can be up-voted (but not down-voted) and flagged, but do not generate reputation. There's no revision history, and when they are deleted they're gone for good.Source

There are few reasons only when it is recommended to comment to

  • Request clarification from the author;
  • Leave constructive criticism that guides the author in improving the post;
  • Add relevant but minor or transient information to a post.

This means, that once an issue mentioned above is resolved then with the issue the purpose of a comment was resolved too. All resolved comments should then be deleted to reduce clutter and increase readability of a post. It also helps a lot to see issues that are not yet resolved if comments that are no longer necessary will be deleted.

It is not us the moderators but you, the commenter who should help to clean up comment threads. Unfortunately this rarely happens which leads to an automatic flag from the system for over-lengthy comment threads.

Only then moderators will move these comments to a chat room, which is a much better place for discussions of all kind.

Best to avoid this is to clean up lengthy comment threads regularly. This can be done by deleting own comments or by flagging comments that are no longer needed for moderator deletion.

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I would like to ask not to delete too much, please see the top upvoted answer here: Let us clean up comments

I like comments and see them as a nice addition to each question. I am in doubt you can achieve more answers by deleting comments. Comments show how vital a site is. I absolutely understand there is no right for comments being kept and I appreciate all the moderator work but I am simply asking to keep a bit more.

This might sound a bit strange but I am learning from comments how people think and how an answer might have evolved over time.

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  • 1
    You might have noticed that we are very tolerant in leaving comments in place. It usually is only those "Oh I see - thank you very much :-)" comments that can safely be removed. But lengthy (>20) comment threads are a pain to sort out. They will always benefit from keeping them as a whole in a place where referencing, pinning, pinging, starring also is possible: the chat which will be kept with a post forever. I don't think many people are happy to scroll through 20 comments or more. Also, there is nothing but deleting to stop people from reading dreadfully wrong stuff posted there.
    – Takkat
    Commented Feb 14, 2018 at 23:06

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