What are the benefits of removing comments without replying to them on the basis that they’ve been addressed in an edit?

Question

Certain users are fond of seeing questions on answers and then integrating their answers to the answer to which they were a comment before removing the comment that is apparently considered to be “no longer needed.”

The problem with this is that it likely prevents the one who had asked the answer for clarification from being notified that the answer to the question which they had asked is newly available.

Is a better practice not to reply to the comment as well as editing the answer so that the initial commenter may be notified? Then perhaps at some later point the initial comment can be removed although I don’t see an ideal way of resolving when that latter point should best be. The point is I suppose that just because a feature exists doesn’t mean that it makes optimal sense to use it.

Answer 1

Comments are meant to be temporary

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

Some users are diligent about flagging comments for deletion once they have served their purpose and others are less so, but a commenter should expect that at some point their comment will be deleted and they will not be notified of that. There is no expectation on the OP or the mods to let the commenter know and no practical way of doing so - using a comment to do so just leads to more comments that need to be deleted.

However, if you want to see if changes were made to the post in response to your comment, follow it.