Can or should you flag questions with even a minor negative tone?

Question

I think Stack Exchange has worked a lot in recent years in improving the overall positivity of the site, and it’s been effective.

I’ve noticed they try to be a little more subtle about showing you your downvotes so it doesn’t hit so hard - I think downvotes subtract a smaller amount of reputation points than upvotes add. Also, there seem to be more protocols in place to help new people ask better quality questions or editing them to improve quality.

Anyway, I recently noticed you can’t edit other people’s comments, as an editor. I feel like this could actually be beneficial. It seems like comments don’t currently have the “self-regulating” aspect of much of the rest of the site. You can be a lot more free in how you write them, and they basically seem to stick around forever.

You can flag comments, though, so I’m wondering if the top moderators can actually edit and/or delete comments.

I feel like one remaining “pain point” for me as a user, being a sensitive person, is that sometimes people still express a bit of negativity in the comments. Sometimes it’s a natural, well-intended expression of sentiment that a question isn’t well-formatted, or is unclear, or the premises of the question do not appear to make sense, or the question appears to be either obvious or nonsensically asking for something either impossible or tautological, etc.

Those little comments like “I have no idea what you are asking”, “I am confused”, “Do you really think that?”, etc, still kind of add up for me, as well as downvotes.

Barring Stack Exchange maybe allowing more comment editing and maybe even making downvotes more hidden - like something for moderators to see but there being no need for an asker to see their question is at -13 instead of just having no upvotes -

I was wondering if you can / should just regularly flag any comment that does not seem optimal. Not abusive or a breach of conduct or anything like that, just small stuff like there’s one small, minorly negative choice of word in there that could be improved; or a comment that asked for clarifying information in the past but is now irrelevant since the post was updated in response to it.

Answer 1

You can flag comments, though, so I’m wondering if the top moderators can actually edit and/or delete comments.

The site moderators can edit and delete comments. Comments are actually meant to be volatile and we mods are always on the lookout to remove redundant comments wherever possible. Comments are basically only used to ask for clarifications or suggestions to improve a post. 'Thank you' comments are frowned upon and should be removed for instance. Flagging comments is fine. Don't overkill though; flagging one comment in a post, instead of every single comment, and adding info that the comment string seems redundant will do fine :) Flagging a rude post is also fine.

Those little comments like “I have no idea what you are asking”, “I am confused”, “Do you really think that?”, etc, still kind of add up for me, as well as downvotes.

You shouldn't take things personally, especially not so on scientific stacks. Regarding downvoting - I upvote and downvote a lot, and I recommend every user to do the same, including downvoting when necessary. Downvotes help to push low-quality answers to the bottom and also help the mod team to identify problematic posts. Bad questions that have received net negative vote counts are automatically removed after a while, which keeps the site clean and tidy. Downvotes are useful and necessary.

Barring Stack Exchange maybe allowing more comment editing and maybe even making downvotes more hidden - like something for moderators to see but there being no need for an asker to see their question is at -13 instead of just having no upvotes

Comment editing is not very useful; comments are to ask for clarifications, primarily. If there's rudeness or unusefulness in play - flag the comment for mod attention. Per above reply, downvotes should not be hidden. They are an integral part of the SE philosophy and necessary and useful for the mod team.

I was wondering if you can / should just regularly flag any comment that does not seem optimal.

As said, sure thing, please feel free to flag any redundant or inappropriate content on the site, but don't overkill. Critical comments are a good thing and don't take things too personally.

...just small stuff like there’s one small, minorly negative choice of word in there that could be improved;

No - do not overkill, handling nitty gritty semantic stuff is not what mods are here for. We are here to keep the site free of inappropriate posts and spam, but also to keep it clean.

...or a comment that asked for clarifying information in the past but is now irrelevant since the post was updated in response to it.

Yes - redundant comments should be removed and therefore flagged for mod attention. Don't overkill though; for instance, recent comments that have been dealt with by OP may still be useful for other users to see and especially for the mod team to assess the history of a post. Old, redundant comments can be flagged for removal, sure.