What to do about comment misuse?

Question

In the recent community checkin post How is the community doing? [2018], the two most highly voted complaints (at the time of this writing) are about comment misuse - namely:

• Answering in comments (mostly on questions)
• Arguing in comments (mostly on answers)

We have existing guidance on comments:

• Why are site comments being deleted? and more in comments
• Should users refrain from answers (or partial answers) in comments?, How to deal with answers in comments?, and more in answers-in-comments

For metrics, we have deleted 2000 comments (exactly! That's weird) in the last month. It was 2000 comments over three months in 2013 per Can we re-evaluate our comment deletion policy? (or at least have access to the data?), a 3x growth over 5 years (not bad really given overall site growth). But since only mods have comment deletion ability, it's a large part of our workload.

The fact that the community feels strongly about this warms the cockles of an old mod's heart, because early in the site many people didn't understand the harmfulness of using comments in these ways and there was quite some arguing about it that you might see going through those older guidance posts. (How dare you delete comments, it's censorship, etc etc.) It's nice that proper use of comments has become normative, and it certainly helps that the community has been flagging and such.

The question is, what can we do (other than what we're doing now) to further reduce the misuse of comments?

Answer 1

Don't call it a "comment"

With this feature enabled, you can't "add a comment". You can only "suggest improvements":

This is only a change in wording, so the mechanics of it aren't any different (e.g. it still requires 50 rep). The real change is psychological.

The change in wording has been very successful on Area51. It was also tested on regular Q & A sites.

On Interpersonal Skills, which has objectively worse comments than this site and a similarly strict comment policy, this feature was tested for a month and the results are out, which Shog describes as "an improvement" but not a "dramatic improvement". The same experiment (but this time for two months) also ran on The Workplace.

Answer 2

Flag Inappropriate Comments

From How do comments work? on Meta.SE:

Who can delete comments?

A user may delete one of their own comments at any time by clicking on the (x) icon that appears to the right of the comment's timestamp when the comment is moused over.

Comments that are flagged by multiple users are deleted automatically. The number of flags needed is based on the comment's score. It currently takes "3 + (Score / 3)" flags to delete a comment. Comments containing certain keywords can reduce this amount.

Moderators can delete any comment, or purge all comments from a post. They also have the ability to move all of a post's comments to chat.

So not only will flagging bring misuse of comments to moderator attention - if enough people do it, deletion will be automatic. So you have the power!

Answer 3

Flag Backtalk

Both @korvinstarmast and @wibbs mention in comments on other answers here that they sometimes get hostile backtalk from people when they give nice "please don't answer in comments" or "please don't discuss in comments" comments that make them more reluctant to do them. Please flag those as "rude or abusive" instead of engaging and we'll give them a little diamond-ranked talking to. I know it can be intimidating for people to snap back at you, but it's OK, if they don't take being educated about the site in good grace we have other tools and that doesn't have to be on you to handle.

It's helpful for us to know what flags are "business as usual" and which are people actively arguing about the site rules; we figure everyone can handle the former but we're here for the exceptions (the latter).

Unfortunately, people especially from "not around here" don't always get our ways and some of them are going to get upset. Can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs. Some folks will leave the site if they can't comment when and where they want - unfortunate, but in the end then we don't want them here. One of the stock mod message/suspension reasons is excessive discussion in comments, and we'll use it if people just refuse to play by the rules the community expresses to them.

Answer 4

Don't Engage

You know how your mother said it takes two people to have an argument? Well, she was right.

Sure, it's unhelpful when someone posts a comment basically saying "you're wrong and I disagree" on your answer. But responding to them, short of an addressing an actual factual issue they're suggesting you look at, tends to devolve into a lengthy "Is not! Are too! Is not! Are too!" session. That's what votes are for, if 100 people think your method of handling problem players is bad they'll vote you down, one comment doesn't make a difference.

If there's a legit critique proposed - edit emendations into your answer, or don't if you disagree with them. Flag the comment as obsolete either way because you've handled it. Don't argue in comments.

At most, you should curtail a comment argument with a single comment saying "I disagree with that and my answer stands, but feel free and contribute your own answer." Or if you really want to hash it out with them, a chat link to take it to chat.

(If you didn't know, [chat] in a comment automagically expands to Role-Playing Games Chat--you don't even need to dig up the link!)

Answer 5

Tell Them To Quit It

Make yourself a stock comment, possibly with a link to one of the main metas on answering in comments or commenting. Make it pleasant, and then reuse it. When someone is answering in comments or otherwise misusing comments, post it there. That will help them, especially new users or even old users who are just letting their fingers get out ahead of them a little, realize what the normative behavior is and that it bothers other site users.

For example,

Hello @user! While it's great you're trying to help, here on RPG.SE we believe that answering in comments is harmful to our format, and those comments may be deleted taking your hard work with them. Please consider answering in an answer instead. Here's a reference on our policy: Should users refrain from answers (or partial answers) in comments?

That's for answering in comments, but you can do similarly for ongoing comment discussion.

---

Here's the text above, but in copy-able format:

Hello @user!  While it's great you're trying to help, here on RPG.SE we believe that answering in comments is harmful to our format, and those comments may be deleted taking your hard work with them.  Please consider answering in an answer instead.  Here's a reference on our policy: [Should users refrain from answers (or partial answers) in comments?](https://rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6533)

Answer 6

Educate users, make policies visible by leaving comments

I consider this answer to be in agreement with mxyzplk's answer, but I feel like the rationale here is different in a way that is important in the discussion.

Aside from the obvious things we should already be doing (not answering in the comments, flagging answers in comments aggressively) I do have a proposal that I think might be useful.

I think that we should try to always leave a comment when see an answer in the comments (after flagging/deleting). I know we do do this, but I don't think we do it enough.

The reason I say this something we should be doing more is that as a new user this was exactly the way I learned how to behave. Seeing "comments are not for extended discussion" and "don't comment in the answers" comments in a lot of places is what helped me learn what is accepted in the community without having to make those mistakes myself first. It makes sense that this could be the case for other users as well.

Additionally, if the comment tags the person, they know that their comment was removed and why and hopefully won't do it again. This is helpful in cases where the person just leaves a comment then never reads the question again.

And, to be clear, this is something that every person in the community that has the rep to comment can and should be doing. This is not the sole responsibility of diamond moderators.

tl;dr When you (yes you) see an answer in the comments, flag it then comment saying that it goes against our policy. Doing so should create a greater awareness of the policy for new and experienced users alike.

This answer was spawned from my answer to a previous question (one of the answers that actually inspired this question): How is the community doing? [2018]

Answer 7

Don't mis-identify valid comments as misuse

I tend to add comments (in lieu of a downvote) when I see an inaccurate answer. This gives the answerer a chance to improve his answer, or discuss my feedback. I prefer this approach over giving someone a drive by downvote with no explanation. This is even the preferred way of doing things on the Stack Exchange sites, as evidenced by the UI you receive when you use the downvote button, see the screenshot from the RPG site below.

Recently, I have personally observed that my constructive comments get deleted (without even notifying me that they've been deleted!). It's very valuable to have discussions in the comments about the veracity of an answer, even if the comments are incorrect. By having a visible log of the discussion, you can address common misconceptions, and avoid more people commenting about the exact same issue. Deleting discussion comments just invites the same comments from different people ad-nauseum.

Answer 8

Make a button to automatically start a chat room where one could write a comment

It is currently possible for a mod to move a comment thread to chat. Once a threshold is reached, you can also press a button to move to chat a thread you participate at.

However, sometimes I understand that I want a chatty discussion about something instead of suggesting improvements. It would be nice to always have a button to open a chat room that will be automatically linked in comments as if comments from this thread were moved to chat.

It could be a good idea to call the "add a comment" button "suggest improvements", as mentioned before, AND also have a button called like "Open a chat room".

Answer 9

Over on Robotics, I have several Copy-pastable comment text for common problems with questions templates related to comments. I use these frequently, but I've also seen non moderators help out with problem comments using my templates too.

Since you can go and read the full text, I won't copy them here, but the main thing that I try to get across is that comments are for helping to improve questions and answers, and are distracting, so we try to keep them to a minimum. I also explain that comments should be considered ephemeral and that any comment which no longer actively helps to improve a question or answer may be deleted at any time to tidy up a post.

Answer 10

Fix the problem instead of hiding the symptoms

People don't answer in comments because they hate the site or can't find the answer box. People put "answers" in comments because it solves a problem.

I know that stackexchange really loves the format of asking a precise well-phrased and well-researched question which is then answered with a precise well-phrased and well-researched answer. Unfortunately that's not always how it goes. Sometimes the question comes from a misunderstanding. Sometimes you have an incorrect assumption. Sometimes you cannot phrase your question properly because you are asking about a thing you don't know about.

For example when you have a question of the form "How do I do X?" someone might want to answer "There is an obvious answer Y, but that is a trap." That is not a proper answer, or at least it shouldn't be. But it also doesn't ask for clarification, so it should not be a comment either. It's also too important not to say. So people just put it in a comment anyway, because it's the best of the existing options.

While the community is fairly good at deleting those comments it is extremely frustrating to have your valuable contributions deleted which can lead to more problems later on.

There are valuable contributions that are neither answers nor comments

At least not answers and comments that are currently accepted. Identify what those are (besides the above example). Find a place for them. Once you do that "comment misuse" and more importantly frustrating users will be less frequent.

In case you think there is no such thing as a valuable contribution that is neither an answer nor a comment I propose you use the following rule: Instead of flagging or deleting comments that are answers convert them into answers. You will quickly discover that many of those comments that were being deleted for being answers are not answers either.