How long is an "Extended discussion"

Question

In this thread a group of -- oh horrors -- three comments, at least one of them potentially quite useful, and not constituting a back&forth between two users, was hidden -- oops, "moved to chat". It seems that this has been happening more often on shorter comment threads, since he recent moderator election. I will be careful to vote next year.

In the meantime, what is the standard for an "extended discussion"? It seems to me that three comments do not qualify, and I see many questions with far more than three comments not moved. They were not comments by me, or I would have reposted them where they belonged.

Answer 1

Hmmmm.

Well, it doesn't say one-sided, so we should assume two or more participants.

And it isn't retort, comeback, riposte, or even repartee. That guides us to interaction that exceeds a simple 1-2.

And certainly, it's not colloquy or verbal altercation. So we can set aside the formality and tone.

But it's not a debate, which entails considerable back and forth.

Perhaps this bounds us between a simple 1-2 and a debate.

Yet that's a continuum, and now the term extended matters. That has the sense of duration. In particular, an above-average duration. But not just barely above average. More like a clear-and-convincing distance from the mean. That is, a medium level. Somewhere between preponderance of the evidence and beyond a reasonable doubt, if these were durations.

So I'd say an extended discussion involves an interchange between multiple participants that lasts about a standard deviation beyond the average duration.

Three comments doesn't cut it in my view.

Answer 2

Exactly as long as a piece of string.

But seriously, it's entirely arbitrary, as with everything about the move-to-chat feature. There is no guideline except for the information available in the help center (which is a rather open-ended license for removal), and no metric by which one can measure the benefit to the site's users of forklifting comments into a place where they cannot be found, and the standard of cleaning them up only after the conclusion of a conversation to improve a post is inconsistently applied, at best (and even if it was consistently applied, many people, myself included, see it as little better than petty vandalism).

The general position of the moderators, network-wide, on comments seems to be approximately the following: The sites have comments for some reason. Comments are terrible and make our lives hard, but we aren't the programmers, so we can't remove them. So don't use them! Or, if you do use them, and they get deleted for any reason, don't blame us, we warned you that they're temporary. It's rather "chilling effect"-ish, but that's what we've got.

Answer 3

I was the responsible mod and I am happy to own, and explain, my reasons.

First, the "Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat." is a canned message - it happens every time comments are moved to chat irrespective of how "extended" the discussion is or isn't.

Second, I refer you to How do comments work? on the Stack Exchange Meta. In particular:

When should comments be deleted?

Comments are temporary "Post-It" notes left on a question or answer. You should not expect them to be around forever. Once a clarification has been made, an edit added to the post to include new information, or the issue in the comment is otherwise resolved, it is subject to deletion. In reality, many obsolete or chatty comments remain untouched due to the high volume of comments posted, but this does not mean that they can't or shouldn't be deleted in the future.

There were 3 comments here - the first 2 had been incorporated into your answer and were no longer needed. The third was a "thank you for your answer" which are discouraged (see link).

Third, I stuffed up. I should have just deleted these instead of moving them to chat. Notwithstanding, the chat room will wither and die as it is not big enough to be permanently archived.

Fourth, the remaining comments (mine & yours) should now also be deleted as they ar no longer required, however, I think its better if we leave them and I will add a comment pointing to this question.

Cheers.