MVP Proposal: Requests for Clarifications and Feedback

Non-ephemeral comment / ‘Notes’

An interesting idea, could you give an example of what you mean? Or @Marc.2377, since you are also in favour of these?

I’m sure I’ve seen an example myself, but I can’t think of one off the top of my head. But I’d guess that 90% of the time “helpful permanent comments about the post” should be incorporated into the post itself, or in a separate post (A, or rarely, Q).

I do like the idea of calling them notes, if a useful role can be found for them :slight_smile:


Recognising useful/helpful non-QA contributions and content in clarifications and feedback

Separately, should users be rewarded for these things (notes, comments, discussion) ? On SE, if someone takes time to work through an issue (in comments) to refine the problem to the point where it is solved, it’s difficult to formally recognise that.

On Codidact, should helpful comments/notes/discussion be rewarded in some way?


Moderation and quality control

If we decide there are to be perma-comments (notes), threaded discussion and chat potentially associated with a post, there should be appropriate moderation tools to interact with those, for example:

  • flags for inappropriate content
  • voting for helpful/unhelpful refinements (comments/notes discussion)
  • convert comment thread to QA, convert note to answer, convert chat to something, etc

Users can and should do this on SE for comments, but having tools to do it lowers the barriers to doing so.


SNR (signal-to-noise ratio)

The more we load up a given topic/QA with notes, comments and discussion, the busier that topic gets. This is where SE’s model of ephemeral comments is helpful: it gives what most folks want quickly and most visibly.

This isn’t to say don’t expand clarifications, feedback and discussion of posts; just to consider the UX carefully!

: for ‘moderation’, read ‘user with appropriate level of trust’

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Hence my proposal: we only have one second-level thing, whether it’s called comments or notes or discussion or chat or what not, and we give it low emphasis. If it’s busy, it’s busy. If it’s important and needs visibility, edit the relevant post or write an answer.

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Ah sure, easy one. Here’s an example taken from literally the most recent QA I visited on Stack Overflow, from my history:


Now, the first sentence is obviously obsolete, as the answer was indeed accepted. The comment is overall useful and should be visible just the way it is, though (IMO), since it not only states “this should be the accepted answer”, but also explains exactly why. Does that information belong in another answer? I’d say no. Does it belong in a discussion page? I don’t think so either.

Another example from this answer:

… now also obsolete because it was incorporated to the answer. But before it was… It was useful and should not be hidden under a ‘Discussions’ tab.

Another one:

This comment is just a great complement to what is already a great answer. If the author of the answer wants to add that info to their text, great. If not… I’d like to have this comment visible right under the answer so we can benefit from it.

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The information about codepen belongs in whatever post mentions codepen. It shouldn’t be buried in a comment. The recommendation for ponyfill should be an upvote of jhildenbiddle’s answer.

Right, it should have been an edit of the answer.

Again, this should have been edited into the answer. The author doesn’t have to be the one to do it.

Stack Overflow has evolved an anti-edit culture, compared to what Joel and even Jeff imagined at the beginning. Let’s not repeat that mistake and be more firm in encouraging edits.

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You seem to be encouraging edits to other people’s posts in ways that change their original content, which makes sense considering the ideal of a ‘Wikipedia of the non-notable’ you mentioned in the other thread - meaning, it’s not “their content”. The implications to reputation are easily dismissed because I understand you propose we do away with reputation, too.

Essentially, this would mean that every Q or A post would be what is known as a ‘Community Wiki’ in SE jargon.

And this is where I’m going to have to fundamentally disagree with you. The short explanation being that this proposal doesn’t fit in with what we want to build. (I believe; certainly speaking for myself, this would be true, though.)

Of course, I’ll post another, dedicated answer to the other thread detailing why I don’t believe this can work.¹ Update: done - What are we trying to build? - #45 by Marc.2377


1: Well, maybe it *can* work - it just doesn't replace the need for a proper Q&A engine with the same basic principles that were demonstrated to work for SE.
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On SE, deletion of posts isn’t permitted, perhaps outside of some extremely exceptional circumstances. Once it’s posted, it becomes part of the community.

Yes you still have the copyright to your posts (where applicable) and yes you can post them elsewhere, turn them into blog posts, write a book, whatever. But the post on SE becomes the community’s. And if there’s something missing from the answer, it should be edited into the answer.

(as an aside, I’d quite like the ability to upvote edits, for those folks who turn other folks’ lump of iron Q or A into gold, but that’s a feature proposal for elsewhere)

I agree with @gilles that the example comments you provided should be part of their respective answers. The goal should be to build a network of high quality QA; the information required should be in the post itself, not in a comment, discussion page or note.

As a supplementary point to that, a post author should not be able to block critical/relevant edits to their post.

Editing posts is mostly separate to reputation, and can be done with a model like SEs, something slightly different, or another system entirely.


: Exceptional, like: “We’ve posted the code to the Vatican’s health system and it contains the Pope’s medical records!”

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I think we have the following consensus:

  • Comments should exist, but with low-visibility (extra talk/discussion page). Comments shouldn’t be deleted in most cases (unless rude/…)
  • It should be possible to ping a user (or even better: multiple users) from a comment. This will result in an inbox notification.
  • We should develop and maintain an editing-culture (posts, not comments).

I think the following things are also consensually agreed with, however I’m not 100% certain about it. I’d include them, unless someone objects:

  • Comments are threaded
  • Voting should not be MVP, however flagging should be.

Am I missing something? Are some of these points not agreed with? If so, please reply to this post, otherwise this discussion will close 72 hours after the last reply (3 days; longer than default, as this is a contentious topic). If no objections are raised, this consensus will be added to the Wiki, otherwise I will either post a new summary (if I missed something) or a voting may be held.

(Added to MVP list.)

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Totally agree. Comments need to be there because there needs to be at least some way to discuss posts. And comments can be for extended discussion so long as it does not disrupt the main point of the post. Although I don’t think we should put the comments on a separate page - rather offer an option to expand all comments under the post. Something non-intrusive but easy to access should do the trick.

I think pings are essential for communication but the amount of pings in a single comment should be limited to three users or so. Overall I agree with that point.

When you say “editing culture” I’m going to assume you mean posts and mot comments. Yes, posts should be able to be edited as with SE - it just increases the quality of the site exponentially. As for comments - there should be no option to edit comments except for the author of the comment. Comments are often opinions and we need to preserve those without tampering from other users.

Definitely. The way SE does it is confusing and turns into a mess real quick when you have lots of comments.

I definitely agree that flagging needs to be MVP. As for voting - I don’t quite have an opinion on that, but as far as I am aware most of the proposals have not included voting as MVP, so I’d be fine keeping it out for now.

Overall: this is a nice summary of what the MVP entry should look like. I don’t have major objections.

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100% The comments need to be on the same page. Maybe a notification “x comments” or maybe show all since last view (for logged in users).

Can you clarify what do you mean by this? Would we not have a flag → “no longer needed”? Or does it mean that even cleaned-up comments would be archived/visible somewhere in most cases?

I don’t think we should delete comments when they are no longer needed, because if we do the system right, comments are supposed to invoke some sort of change and therefore we’ll have a lot of comments being deleted. I would say that comments could be flagged as outdated and users who view the thread would see new/hot comments first automatically.

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If they are no longer needed, how does it help to keep them? What do we lose by deleting them?

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I think the point, or at least the way I think comments should work, is that content, including comments, is never truly DELETED, except in cases of legal issues (DMCA?) or real junk (spam and its relatives). In all other cases, those “deleted” comments (and deleted Q & A) has potential real value, and there is no “legal” harm in keeping the information takes little real-world space. Everything (except legal & junk) is marked as deleted and available only to OP (of that specific item) and appropriate high-rep/moderators. When issues arise (and they will) about various problems, edit wars, comments that seem to make no sense because without the previously deleted comments they seem out of context, etc. having that deleted information available for appropriate review can be extremely helpful.

People don’t generally spam comments on SE, compared to questions and answers; do you see that being an issue for us?

Mods can see deleted comments on SE; I agree it would be helpful if they can see them here also.

I’m equivocal on keeping deleted comments forever versus purging/Roomba-ing after, say, 90 or 180 days. There’s little cost in terms of disk space, but there may other costs (DB lookups? I don’t know enough to comment on performance).

I suspect (but an actual SE moderator could tell us) that spam in comments happens but gets moderator deleted quickly.

There may be less of a problem with comments in SE simply because it requires 50 rep. For a drive-by spammer that is enough to stop them. For certain others (I remember one on DIY, not a spammer per se, but “problematic”) they can gain enough rep pretty quickly to comment and then post a lot of inappropriate comments. Better to be prepared.

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It no doubt happens yes, but as you say it requires 50 rep on SE, way above posting a Q or A. Other spam dwarfs it.

I would not treat is as a special deletion category- if it’s a problematic user I believe it would be better kept for auditing purposes; or for when the inevitable complaint about rough treatment comes in…

Generally speaking keep it all (forever) or bin it all (eventually); I’m open to either.

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"keep it all (forever)" except for DMCA-type issues (which would likely apply to Q&A, not to comments, but anything is possible, and I really don’t know how that works - it might be that we would actually have to keep it but make it not public - that’s for legal people to figure out).

Then a year down the road we can discuss, and implement if appropriate, a purge routine for “deleted > 1 year old” or whatever.

I agree with all of this except the voting part. I think voting needs to be MVP. Reputation doesn’t, but I think users need to be able to provide that signal about quality from day 1. Otherwise you get Yahoo Answers.

I do think obsolete comments (“could you edit to address X?” “thanks, done” “good edit”) should get deleted, because readers shouldn’t have to dig through the clutter. But “deleted” here means soft-deleted. On SE moderators can see deleted comments, and I think we could broaden that privilege here (however we decide on privilege levels), but here, as on SE, you should have to take some action to see the deleted ones – by default they’re out of view for everyone, and you get an indicator that there are deleted comments if you’d be able to see them.

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I added most of this to the requirements; please update if there are further changes. I didn’t address comment deletion since that’s still open. I did include voting on posts but marked it as under discussion.

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I understood the voting here as specifically comment voting (since the whole post was about comments). I agree that voting on posts should definitely be in MVP. Voting on comments is nice to have, but I don’t think it is essential. Of course YMMV.

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