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I added a comment to this answer talking about how it was good but incomplete and that said fact may have implied a flaw in the question. IIRC it received some upvotes, no replies.

Having read the comments policy linked by the deleting mod, I'm not quite sure how my comment was worthy of deletion. Poorly worded? Extraneous bits?

How should I have worded it differently/what other action should I have taken?

I'm on this stack pretty regularly, it didn't jive with my intuitive grasp of the rules here, and since I e.g. go through the review queues I'd like some further clarification so I don't make mistakes.

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When I deleted the comments below the question it already had 30 comments, most of them containing pointless political bickering. So I just nuked the whole thread. I just reviewed your comment to see if it has special value which might justify to restore it.

Your comment in particular was:

This answer, while totally and unfortunately accurate, highlights a flaw in the question: this answers the question from the perspective of US elites, but I would bet my next paycheck the average American doesn't think about the question in those terms even if they'd agree with you when it's put like this.

Let's review the comment policy and if the comment fulfills it:

You should submit a comment if you want to: Request clarification from the author;

Sorry, can't find any request for clarification here.

Leave constructive criticism that guides the author in improving the post;

The primary criticism here is addressed at the question, not the answer. If there is any criticism directed at the author of the answer, it is destructive criticism ("you should not put it like this") but no constructive criticism ("You should maybe add this"). Also, the comment was posted 2 days ago and the author of the question logged in and read that comment in the meantime, so we can assume that they did not feel the need to act on any criticism. So when the comment had the purpose to convince the author to change their answer, it unfortunately failed at doing that.

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).

Sorry, can't find anything of that sort either.

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  • That's a fair enough interpretation IMHO, but I needed the explication: it wasn't as obvious to me. And I certainly understand why it wouldn't be exempted from a whole-thread nuke, I'm sure by the nature of politics it's hard to police all of this adequately. Should I have made a comment on the question instead? Something like "do you mean from the perspective of the US gov? Or the average American citizen?" Feb 15, 2019 at 13:40

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