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Feature requests: Comment threads that become discussions

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    This answer was flagged, and I tend to agree that the comment thread got out of hand and had turned into a discussion. I asked that it end, and redirected people here.

    More generally, should we be worried about this happening in the comments? Is there anything to do about it?

    • CommentAuthorHarry Gindi
    • CommentTimeDec 11th 2009 edited
     
    Perhaps a feature request to automatically lock comments and post a link to an automatically generated topic on meta. Something like, "To continue the discussion, go to _Link_.

    Haha, I just realized that Allen Hatcher posted literally right below the discussion.
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    I don't think we need to worry about it too much. It's certainly not something we need to request a new feature to handle. The right thing to do is to post a comment asking people to take the discussion to meta (anybody can do this). If you want, you can open a thread on meta and link to it. If the discussion continues the the comments, a moderator can lock the post; I'd be quite surprised if this has to happen more than once a month.

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    I suppose we could politely ask certain members to refrain from making comments that are useless and/or provocative.
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    Ehh, that seems too hard to enforce.
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    Not hard to enforce at all. If a user indulges in undesirable behavior after being asked not to, a moderator can suspend his account, effectively making the problem user have reputation 1 for the duration of the suspension. In particular, the user simply won't be able to comment any more.

    But I don't think it will ever come to that. There have been a few blatant trolls that we've suspended, but I don't think we've ever suspended a user with more than 1 rep. Every time I've emailed a user and explained exactly what the problem is and what I'd like them to fix, I've gotten a positive response.

    Here are some things to keep in mind when you see a useless/provocative/discussiony comment:

    • A certain amount of discussion in comments is okay. It's fine to comment, "I disagree with this answer because x, y, and z," especially when the answer consists largely of an opinion or recommendation. If a series of such back and forth comments lasts more than a total of 3 or 4 comments, you almost certainly did the "because x, y, and z" part of your first comment wrong. If that happens, move the discussion to meta (if you must continue it) and do a better job with your first comment next time.
    • Leave a comment explaining that the person is not contributing to the post with their comment. If the comment is not pure trolling, try to include some constructive feedback. Point out that the comment could be less inflammatory and/or more useful. "That book is awful" is a terrible comment (inflammatory and basically contentless), "I could never get much out of that book" is better (pretty contentless, but no longer inflammatory), and "every time I read that book, I get totally confused by this-and-that notation and all the typos" is much better.
    • You can flag the comment as offensive/spam/hate speech. If it gets several of these flags in a short time, it will be automatically deleted. If the user is a repeat offender, flag the post (the parent question or answer to the comment thread) for moderator attention with the post number of another post where the same user was being purely inflammatory/offensive/useless. If I (or another moderator) think the situation warrants it, I'll send the user an email telling them to cut it out, or temporarily suspend the account.

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