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The moderators are too quick to delete comments. They frequently delete them without giving any notice. They should raise the threshold for comment deletion considerably.

As an example, a recent question about the CFA Franc attracted a couple of comments pointing out its unwarranted assumptions. These disappeared without a trace.

Such deletions detract from the quality of the site.

Edit by Philipp: These were the deleted comments:

Ethiopia went to war with Eritrea when the latter country was "ditching" the Ethiopian currency. The alleged casus belli was a small border dispute. The war did not turn out well for either country. It took 20 years to re-establish normal relations between the countries.

First question should be 'does France want to stop it' in my opinion.

Why would it hurt France's power? The currency is pegged to the euro, which France controls only indirectly. Should France object to Bosnia and Herzegovina ditching the Convertible Mark?

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    To clarify: I assume you are aware of the help article about the commenting privilege and how it defines what comments should and should not be used for. Is your point that the moderators are not enforcing that policy correctly or do you argue that the commenting policy explained in that article is in itself flawed?
    – Philipp Mod
    Aug 14, 2019 at 11:01
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    I added the deleted comments to the question so people can judge better if they fulfilled the purposes of comments or not.
    – Philipp Mod
    Aug 14, 2019 at 11:06

2 Answers 2

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Comments aren't meant to contain primary content on stackexchange.

They're intended to be used to improve the answers themselves. politics.SE seems to me to have a lot more discussion/answering/arguing/etc.. in comments than other SE sites.

It was hard for me to wrap my head around too, but this site isn't for the person asking questions, answering them, or commenting on them. It's for people who show up later to learn something.

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Agree completely. The article about "commenting privilege" referenced by Philipp in his comment shows that this policy is anomalous for StackExchange communities.

Who devised this policy and with what authority or justification? Comments on ALL other StackExchange communities allow far more latitude.

Not only that, but the draconian choice to delete comments, many of which may well be intelligent and germane to the issues at hand, is outrageously high-handed, and completely inconsistent with StackExchange policy.

The StackExchange policy is to encourage people to continue discussions privately ("in chat") if the comment strands seem to be becoming too lengthy.

It appears that a small coterie of people with particularly high-handed and rigid notions of moderation have wrested control of this particular SE community. The question is what to do about it.

@Philipp: can you explain who precisely devised this policy as set out in the help article about commenting, and why these people thought such rigidity and contempt for commenters' own views about the purpose of comments was appropriate? Can you also explain how I can become a moderator, as I wish to change this policy?

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    Which other SE has a different comment policy? As far as I see all pages are identical and differ only for site name and design…?
    – LаngLаngС
    Sep 2, 2019 at 8:07
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    It is contrary to stated policy when any comments remain. They should all be deleted on a pure Q&A site. That some remain is a peculiarity. SE does precisely not encourage "discussion". To avoid deletion of what you write, just start them in chat. Better: write an answer. To become a mod stand for an election. But a mod moderates he does not create a formulated policy, only enforces it (well, and by actions takes part in bringing it to life and into tradition). Change policy: discuss it on meta (here) or change SE policy: discuss it on meta (there)
    – LаngLаngС
    Sep 4, 2019 at 8:04

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