Especially on technical sites, as even sporadic users will have noticed, new users very often don't include important information into the question they're posting.
This usually leads the first user passing by to leave a comment asking for clarifications, which punctually get posted in the comments section.
Many times there's not even the need for a user to ask OP to do so, OP just does that because they forgot something or because they want to improve their question by adding more details.
In any case this leads to:
- Important information posted into the comments section, where they shouldn't stay;
- Question not bumping up in the active questions tab, which doesn't help fixing point #1;
- Unless OP pings one of the users that left a comment in doing so, none of the user who commented will get to know that the requested clarifications were posted, which doesn't help fixing point #1 either.
I think it would be convenient to prompt new users with a popup similar to the popup prompting to leave an explanation upon downvote when a new user leaves a comment under the following conditions:
- OP hasn't been prompted before (i.e. do this only upon OP's first attempt to comment);
- OP is commenting on their own question;
- OP didn't benefit from the association bonus.
The message could go something like this (feel free to rephrase):
Comments shouldn't be used to add important information to the question; if you're adding information useful for your question to be answered, please edit your question instead.
Mock-up:
This could also be a great opportunity to teach new users how to reply to comments:
Comments shouldn't be used to add important information to the question; if you're adding information useful for your question to be answered, please edit your question instead. If you're replying to a comment of another user, you can use
@username
, whereusername
is the username of the user you're replying to without spaces, to notify the user of your reply.
Mock-up: