Why was this comment deleted?

Question

A few days ago I read this question about why there is no "autumntime" or "falltime". I added this comment:

We just use fall or autumn in those cases, both as nouns and adjectives. Not really sure why. We just do it that way. That's not to say you couldn't say "autumntime" if you really wanted to.

Yesterday I noticed the comment had been deleted. I'm curious why that was. The comment was not an answer, certainly, but did not pretend to be one. It was germane to the question, which was itself pretty broad ("Why is it so?" questions tend to be broad to the threshold of being unanswerable, in my view). But it certainly was not offensive. (There are certainly plenty of less germane and more questionable comments scattered throughout this site.) If there was a reason for the deletion, I want to know what the reason was, and if that is a policy.

AndrewLeach restored the comment after I mentioned it to him. But I'm still left with more concerns:

Who are the comment police, and why are they deleting comments that are not offensive but offer some value? Is one of the mods grinding for a badge? If so, that calls into question the idea of badge rewards for potentially destructive activities.

Update

After reviewing some of the answers to this question, especially those which attempt to draw distinctions between what is and is not a "useful" comment (some related at great length and with a form of special pleading one normally might associate with legal briefs from the tobacco lobby), I have to say I still am unable to fathom the difference. I just now looked at 50 or so random comments and in all but two or three the "rules" offered here as guidance were about as useful to determine suitability as a magnetic compass would be to find gold.

I see too that the only reasonable answer here (Daniel's) has been pounced on with negative humor.

Hey, do what you like, folks. Just don't call it logical, transparent, or in any way justifiable. Have the dignity or the courage or whatever it takes to own up to the fact that you don't have any ideas on the matter either besides "Because I said so" or "Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time."

Recent Update

Well, the Splenetic Mod strikes again. What was restored has since been destroyed. Haha, what a petty little site you run here.

Answer 1

A mod should have dismissed that flag. Anyone can see that the comment's on topic, and as for adding "absolutely no useful detail", see @trlkly:

The comment actually adds a bit of information that is not found in the question or any answer. It offers a replacement for the missing (or extremely rare) word "autumntime"--one may simply say "autumn" or "fall." If the comment did only say "we just do it that way," I would agree with you.

KitFox is right about badges not being an issue, which is comforting since we needz all those badges.

I disagree with MrHen in that while comments may not matter much in terms of rep, deleting a comment is telling the poster "what you thought was worth saying wasn't really worth saying", which is OK to a spammer, but not to someone with something legitimate to say.

Obviously the poster thought it worth saying, so don't justify your flag/deletion by pretending comments don't matter. Naturally, the poster deserves the cold shoulder of deletion for being rude or adding absolutely nothing valuable to the thread. And no one will mind an obsolete comment (e.g. please add links) being efficiently thrown under the bus. But a comment which is none of these things should not be flagged, and the mod who sees a flag on such a comment should dismiss it.

I realize there's a gray area for everyone, but if it's in the gray (i.e. "borderline"), you should go the respectful route and at least ignore it. In other words, I subscribe to and believe I can justify the "current ELU pattern of behavior" MrHen referred to.

Even with all that, I'm not sure why anyone is considering Robusto's comment as even borderline.

Answer 2

The moderators on EL&U, the community moderators, and community members with > 15 rep are the 'comment police'. They delete commentary at their discretion.

It is true that our > 15 rep users can only delete offensive comments, and your comment was obviously not. However, these users can indicate what comments they feel should be removed by flagging for moderator attention. We see how many of any given type of flag is on a post and that factors into our decision.

With regard to the decision that was made on your particular comment, and because several people have expressed confusion over why it was considered "borderline", and also because it may benefit future users with a similar question, let me review our guidelines for leaving comments.

First let's look at the comment.

We just use fall or autumn in those cases, both as nouns and adjectives. Not really sure why. We just do it that way. That's not to say you couldn't say "autumntime" if you really wanted to.

What's really added here? OP already knows that we use fall or autumn, so we can cross out the first line. The rest amounts to "I don't know. Use it if you want to."

According to our FAQ:

You should submit a comment if you want to:
1. Request clarification from the author;
2. Leave constructive criticism that guides the author in improving the post;
3. Add relevant but minor or transient information to a post (e.g. a link to a related question, or an alert to the author that the question has been updated).

Your comment does not satisfy #1 or 2. It might be argued that it contains "relevant but minor" information (use it if you want to), so #3.

Contrast these reasons with:

Comments are not recommended for any of the following:
1. Suggesting corrections that don't fundamentally change the meaning of the post; instead, make or suggest an edit;
2. Answering a question or providing an alternate solution to an existing answer; instead, post an actual answer (or edit to expand an existing one);
3. Compliments which do not add new information ("+1, great answer!"); instead, up-vote it and pay it forward;
4. Criticisms which do not add anything constructive ("-1, see previous comments you scallywag!"); instead, down-vote (and provide or up-vote a better answer if appropriate);
5. Secondary discussion or debating a controversial point; please use chat instead;
6. Discussion of community behavior or site policies; please use meta instead.

Of these, #2 or 5 might apply, if you consider "I don't know" an answer or "use it if you want to" to be an alternative solution or secondary discussion.

So according to the guidelines, that leaves possibly-OK comment (maybe some minor relevant information) or possibly-not-OK comment (answer-as-a-comment or other discussion), hence grey area. Whoever looked at it made the decision to delete it, so we can assume that the not-OK outweighed the OK in that mod's judgement.

What is in the FAQ is the policy and has been the policy for quite some time. Mods delete comments all the time, not just your comments. It is part of what we do. If you think the policy needs to be changed, bring it up on Meta.

As for why your comment was deleted, amongst all the comments that don't meet the criteria here, that's because a mod saw it and decided to delete it. So the answer is in fact "because [that mod] said so" and also "it seemed like a good idea at the time." I have yet to fathom why you think this is a big enough issue for Meta.

Comments are ephemeral and will continue to be ephemeral, so if you have something you think is worth keeping around, then post an answer or propose an edit to an existing answer rather than leave a comment.

In any case, your comment has been restored, you have indicated your satisfaction with that solution, and we can all just move on.

Answer 3

Comments are ephemeral, right? They can and are sometimes deleted with no forewarning. It doesn't matter if the comments are pertinent to the question, any comment can be construed as being non-constructive. A constructive comment might be one asking for clarification, or advising a poster to properly attribute citations. And if the poster does edit the post accordingly, the commenter ought to delete his or her comment. If for some reason they forget, an ELU user can flag that comment as being obsolete.

Many constructive comments; however, contain the answer to the question, and we all know that answers posted in the comments section are frowned upon.

But what about answers which are converted into comments? The massively popular and overwhelmingly upvoted answers by the community, the vox populi answers. Answers whose identities suddenly become ‘a day late and a dollar short’ comments. We are then presented with the ironic situation where an answer is agreed by many as offering a good solution but then rejected by one mod (do they ever consult with each other?) and converted into a plain comment. And if constructive and on-topic comments can be deleted, then maybe one day, they too will be deleted.

The two examples below started life as "answers" (10k rep users can see deleted posts):

1. What word can I use instead of "tomorrow" that is not connected with the idea of the rising sun?

2. Polite alternative to the term "bitch" when referring to a female dog

The first comment prior to its conversion had earned 14 upvotes.

The second "answer/comment" had earned an impressive 52 upvotes. As a comment, it now has only six upvotes.

Coincidentally, both answers were the most favoured by the community.

To @Robusto I wouldn't worry about a few random sentences of yours being deleted by a mod especially if they didn't offer a concrete solution. I'd be more concerned with those posts that actually do answer the question, are upvoted, and yet deleted unfairly. My opinion, of course, I accept and expect it won't be shared by many.

UPDATED 2018

It could be that the redeleted comment was flagged as no longer needed by two or more users.

This comment is obsolete, chatty, or otherwise unnecessary.

The OP cannot know for certain whether its deletion can be attributed to a single mod unless he knows something that we don't. Next time, convert the comment into an answer and… let sleeping dogs lie.

Answer 4

To take the other side of the argument, I don't see why this comment should have been undeleted. I wouldn't have personally deleted it (and I can't, seeing as I'm not a mod) but I am having trouble agreeing with this:

It was germane to the question, which was itself pretty broad ("Why is it so?" questions tend to be broad to the threshold of being unanswerable, in my view).

It wasn't really that germane to the question seeing as you added absolutely no useful detail. Saying "we just do it that way" is already covered in the body of the question (or otherwise it wouldn't have been asked).

Therefore, I can understand why someone would delete the comment as "not constructive".

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(There are certainly plenty of less germane and more questionable comments scattered throughout this site.) If there was a reason for the deletion, I want to know what the reason was, and if that is a policy.

So... you are suggesting that we remove these other comments from the site? The policy behind comment deletion, as far as I know, is "comments can be deleted since they are comments." You can find a bunch of interesting discussion on comments, comment deletion and so on here: Help us figure out a way to handle the explosion of comments on Stack Overflow

The current ELU pattern of behavior is to leave comments alone unless they are causing a specific problem but I, personally, find this to be a little lax. I don't see why comments such as the one in question should exist and have little problem deleting them. The only reason I don't flag comments like this is because the ELU community doesn't seem to agree with me and, in the past, the moderators have declined removing such comments. Which is fine in the sense that the community has chosen how to behave. I merely comply.

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All that being said, it was probably deleted by a moderator who was going through the comment flag queue and made a quick judgment call. On further examination, the moderator team reversed the deletion simply because this particular comment was borderline enough to side with the user who cared enough to bring it up.

As in, it doesn't really matter much. It's a comment.