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Some 15 comments or so were deleted by Philipp on this question. Notably, the first comment (which was by another user, whose handle I do not recall) asked something along the lines of "Your question suggests that some of these activities are free, but they are, in fact, not. How are you suggesting that these things come about without financing of any sort?" I believe that this falls under the "Leave constructive criticism that guides the author in improving the post" criterion in the comment policy in that my question might seem to suggest that, e.g. a website might be built and maintained without any sort of funding whatsoever. I, at least, see that the language of my question might be improved based on this comment to be along the lines of "greatly reduced financing" rather than "no financing".

Some later comments took on a secondary discussion, and I personally flagged one for being impolite. However, all of the comments were deleted carte blanche, and I am wondering why they were all deleted, as opposed to only the ones that blatantly ran afoul of the comment policy?

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If it's a comment on your question, it's mostly a comment to you.

Comments on StackExchange are ephemeral, if you've seen the comment, you can use it to improve your post. After that, it doesn't need to stick around.

Comments are subject to deletion even if they have been useful; in fact, that's one of the main comment deletion reasons: no longer needed, presumably because the suggestion in the comment has already been heeded.

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  • I have not yet heeded the comment, and do not specifically recall the content of it. I certainly do not recall the content of the subsequent discussion, which spanned several comments.
    – Him
    Mar 14, 2019 at 19:42
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    @Scott It seems like the subsequent discussion was problematic, hence why you ended up flagging part of it and why it got cleaned up, since comments aren't supposed to be for discussion. If you read the first comment, you should have used it to help improve your post if it was helpful when you read it. If I was the mod and saw the OP engaging in discussion in the comments, I'd assume they have read all the comments up to that point, so they aren't really needed anymore.
    – Bryan Krause
    Mar 14, 2019 at 20:49
  • I did not flag part of it. I flagged part of a separate discussion that had erupted in the comments as part of a tit-for-tat between other contributors.
    – Him
    Mar 14, 2019 at 21:10
  • To be frank, however, it is impossible to divulge the exact nature of the comment thread to you here, since neither you nor I can even go back to view the comment thread. As such, I am somewhat confused as to how you are able to provide any information about why the comments were deleted over and above "because comments get deleted sometimes." Is this what I am supposed to glean from this answer?
    – Him
    Mar 14, 2019 at 21:13
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    Pretty much. The answer is two fold: mod saw the comments as either against policy or no longer needed, and comments are supposed to be temporary. There are many threads on the main meta as well about the purpose of comments.
    – Bryan Krause
    Mar 14, 2019 at 21:16
  • "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." -- this meta post. However, the post in question had been up for less than 24 hours. Although I am relatively active on stackexchange, it is unfortunate that comments about improving my post are subject to deletion in that time frame. I can appreciate that comments may be deleted the second they go up, but this seems to undermine the purpose of comments.
    – Him
    Mar 14, 2019 at 21:34
  • "Comments are made to be deleted" is a possible reading of the comment policy that I am interested in exploring. I have posted a request for clarification on the post I cited above to try to elucidate the matter that you might be interested in.
    – Him
    Mar 14, 2019 at 21:40

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