I rarely ever flag comments, but sometimes I see comments asking for upvotes, and I wonder whether it's reasonable to flag them as noise.

For instance, just within the past couple hours, I have seen:

Can you please consider upvoting my answer too?

Glad it worked for you. Please also consider upvoting if my answer proved helpful to you.

You're welcome! Please upvote my answer and accept it.

Is it reasonable to flag these as noise, or am I just being too pedantic?

If so, what should they be flagged as? Would it be "too chatty", "not constructive", or something else?

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    Comments are for asking clarification and adding more information. These are just noise, I'd flag them as "too chatty". – vaultah Jan 8 '16 at 15:29
  • Yes it is as it contributes nothing to the question or answer. – Hovercraft Full Of Eels Jan 8 '16 at 15:29
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    Flag it, but please don't come back and ask why your flag was marked helpful but the comment wasn't deleted/ask why your flag was denied :) – user1228 Jan 8 '16 at 16:07

Those are fine to flag as being "too chatty". They add nothing to the question or answer, can be annoying to other posters, and we almost always remove them on sight.

I wouldn't go out of my way to search for them, but they're fine to flag as you come across them.

  • Quick side question: If there are two chatty comments (like a "Thanks" followed by a "You're welcome"), do moderators prefer two separate chatty flags or a single custom flag requesting a general comment cleanup? – ryanyuyu Jan 8 '16 at 15:35
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    @ryanyuyu: just give em both a flag. Unless the whole thread needs to go, separate flags are just faster to handle. I love the smell of burning too chatty flags in the morning. For whole comment conversations, use a custom flag and ask for the comments to be purged (on the post or on a comment is both fine). – Martijn Pieters Jan 8 '16 at 15:37
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    I'd also note that some people will flag a comment with a custom reason with something like: "everything after this comment can go" - which is great. Except the only practical way to approve the flag is to delete, then undelete the comment, then delete the following. So it's easier if the comment is on something that should be deleted as well... – Jon Clements Jan 8 '16 at 15:42
  • @JonClements: That would be easier done if we could flag our own comments at least with custom flags... at least some of the time. – Deduplicator Jan 8 '16 at 20:05
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    update: the correct flag option is now "no longer needed" – John Dvorak Jan 19 '18 at 3:37

The example comments you posted are indeed worthless in terms of a contribution to the Q & A. I would say flagging / removing them makes sense.

However, I've noticed that some of the comments in response to those comments go like this:

Oh, I'm sorry, I totally forgot.


This is my first time posting a question, and I didn't know that.

So maybe an acceptable balance can be to post a generally useful comment:

For answers on this site that you find useful, consider an upvote and/or checkmark. There's no obligation. Just one way to promote quality content. Welcome to Stack Overflow!


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