Today I had the following comment conversation posted word for word on one of my answers:

Person A: @OP Or this if you want to stick with pointers for some reason: myclass *a = new myclass();...

Person B: I wish I could downvote comments. Certainly do not use a naked new.

Person B: Even if they do (which is highly unlikely at their level), they definitely should not use owning raw pointers. And you definitely should not recommend that to anyone.

Person A: Well I disagree. It's not that hard to learn proper memory managment.

Person B: Then you are wrong. You are promoting an anti-pattern.

I feel like the last few comments aren't very useful, so I was tempted to flag as NLN, but I'm not sure how much of the rest of the conversation I should leave. What's the community's take on comments arguing about patterns/design?

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    These kind of debates are pretty annoying when they don't have anything to do with your post. Be sure to quickly put an end to it, flag your post with a custom flag to ask a moderator to delete all of the comments. – Hans Passant Oct 22 '18 at 20:57
  • @HansPassant flag my own post? Not one of the comments in the thread? – scohe001 Oct 22 '18 at 20:57
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    You don't really want to risk the moderator deleting only the one you flagged. Easy mistake when they're racing through the flag queue. – Hans Passant Oct 22 '18 at 20:59
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    @HansPassant's last comment is bang on. The mods disagree with each other about how best to flag whole conversations, so for making life easy for the mods neither approach is better than the other, but for us as ordinary users it's better to custom-flag a post than a comment, because sometimes when you do the latter the handling mod screws up and deletes only the flagged comment. Flagging the post instead spares you having to babysit the flag to ensure it's handled properly. – Mark Amery Oct 23 '18 at 12:28
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    @Hans Well, they do have plenty to do with the post, because they are about improving it. But if that improvement doesn't happen then they should be removed as noise. – Lightness Races in Orbit Oct 23 '18 at 13:21
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    @LightnessRacesinOrbit I agree that the first comment is suggesting an alternate approach for the OP and may be an improvement I could make on my answer, but after that it devolved into the back and forth you see above. My question here is how much of that is NLN? Is only the first comment good to stay? The first two? So far it seems people are saying overwhelmingly that the whole thread is NLN, but if you have a different answer, I'd love to see it. – scohe001 Oct 23 '18 at 13:27
  • @scohe001 I don't think I have a strong opinion either way. I was only responding directly to Hans's input – Lightness Races in Orbit Oct 23 '18 at 14:04
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    @scohe001 By the way I love the quote in your profile and already use it frequently ^_^ – Lightness Races in Orbit Oct 23 '18 at 14:05

If the commentator disagrees with an answer, it's best that they post their own answer to clarify their position and provide what they believe is a "correct" assessment.

It is not in anyone's best interest to squabble in comments. Comments like that would be ripe for mass-removal.

Flagging these would be appropriate; hopefully the message that one should post a follow-up answer as opposed to arguing in comments would land.

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    Note that they're not arguing about the answer, but arguing about the suggestion Person A made in the comments. Granted I think this still applies. Thanks! – scohe001 Oct 22 '18 at 19:11
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    IMO it applies doubly-so. If they're just arguing about someone's comment, not the answer itself, then it's even less relevant. If the answer contained naked new for instance, and comments were arguing it wasn't ideal, that could nearly be considered providing feedback on the answer – Tas Oct 23 '18 at 4:53
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    Comments are for suggesting improvements, which is precisely this. – Lightness Races in Orbit Oct 23 '18 at 13:21

I can agree to some extent with Makoto's answer... so long as the comments are about the answer itself. But in this case, the comment discussion started due to a disagreement about a comment. Whether the suggested improvement was actually a good idea.

That's a different kind of thing, since it's no longer about the answer; it's about someone's opinion of the quality of that answer. And that is not unimportant; I don't think it serves anyone's interests for bad advice in comments to go unchallenged, just as it doesn't serve anyone's interests for bad answers to go unchallenged.

The essential problem is that, for bad answers, we have two options that don't involve comments: downvoting and posting your own competing answer. Commenting can be useful; it can prompt the answerer to change their answer, and/or it can let people know exactly what is wrong with the answer (crucial in cases of upvoted answers with subtle bugs). But overall, you don't have to engage with a bad answer in order to challenge it.

For bad comments, we only have one resolution: make an opposing comment. That kind of thing inevitably leads to discussion in comments. So I would offer this advice.

If someone offers bad advice to a question/answer, then comment on it... once. If they defend that advice, leave it alone. Hopefully, other users will upvote your comment, which should suggest that the advice you're commenting on is in fact bad.

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  • For bad comments, we only have one resolution: make an opposing comment. --> not true, you can flag it as no-longer-needed. IIRC, comment will be auto-deleted if 3 users flag it. I often do that for unrelated or wrong comments, that's effective. – llllllllll Oct 24 '18 at 15:20
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    @liliscent: That's not a good use of that flag. No longer needed is for chatty comments, not informative ones. It's just like "Not an answer"; you don't use it for wrong answers; you use it for things that aren't answering the question. – Nicol Bolas Oct 24 '18 at 15:21
  • But it effectively acts as a downvote, since 3 users' flag can delete that comment. It's especially useful if the comment is very wrong, in that case people don't want to engage in a discussion. – llllllllll Oct 24 '18 at 15:24
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    @liliscent: Using the letter of the rules (3 flags auto-deleting something) against the spirit of the rules (use this flag for chatty comments, not misinformed ones) is wrong. You are supposed to use flags for their intended purpose, not for whatever you can make them do that you'd like to see done. – Nicol Bolas Oct 24 '18 at 15:25

Comment debates may be helpful in providing constructive criticism or pointing out problems. As long as they are constructive and on-topic. The first 3 comments are constructive and may be relevant, regardless of what one may think of the use of manual memory management in C++.

But when they reach "Person A: Well I disagree. It's not that hard to learn proper memory management." it stops being constructive and comments could be safely deleted from there on.

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  • "Constructive" seems a little subjective. Can you define what it means in the context of comments discussing programming patterns? – scohe001 Oct 24 '18 at 15:20
  • Unrelated stuff under a post will rarely be "constructive". People want to focus on the post, not other unrelated "suggestion". – llllllllll Oct 24 '18 at 15:22
  • @scohe001 Of course it's subjective. Half of everything in our industry is subjective. Does it contain useful information that's worth spending a little time considering? Then it's constructive. – jpmc26 Oct 24 '18 at 22:31
  • @jpmc26 clearly the 100k+ rep user who was Person B in the comments thought the information was "worth spending a little time considering." If that's the metric we're going by, I'm not sure anything should ever be flagged as I'm sure there will always be someone (namely the commenter themselves) who thinks the information useful. – scohe001 Oct 25 '18 at 15:06

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