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tidied up the answer, thanks to feedback in comments
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The onlyComments can be constructive use for comments is towhen they ask for clarificationclarifications of a question or answer. Such clarifications should then be edited into the question or answer.

So Ideally, any giventhat would happen, and then the comment should quickly become obsoletebe flagged as outdated, and can be deleted. That's not happening at the moment, and we're left with a lot of clutter.

So, I propose a sweeper bot that deletes all commentsa sweeper bot that deletes all comments more than a month old. A month is more than enough time to enable a month old.

Andposter to anticipate the howlsupdate their post in light of protest: if there is anythe content inof the comments that you value, then put. If it hasn't happened after a month, it's probably never going to happen. Any other content should either be edited into questionthe answer, or provided as an alternate answer bodies right now.

I do appreciate that saying this here on this site is a losing battle, because metaMeta.SO hasdoes have an embedded culture of commenting. So even though month-old comments are clutter across just about the whole network, meta.SO cannot and willmore highly valued here; but that's not recognise that. Sometimes the needsnecessarily representative of meta.SO, and the whole Stack Exchange network, coincide. And some times they do notnor of Stack Overflow.

My thanks to the commenters for pointing out that people have already tried to justified the keepingThere would be a very very small amount of comments; reading this attempts at justifications emphatically shows that the collateral damage. And there would be absolutely tiny compared to the advantagea huge amount of removing all the clutterdecluttering, making questions and good answers stand out much more.

The only constructive use for comments is to ask for clarification of a question or answer. Such clarifications should then be edited into the question or answer.

So, any given comment should quickly become obsolete.

So, I propose a sweeper bot that deletes all comments more than a month old.

And to anticipate the howls of protest: if there is any content in comments that you value, then put it into question or answer bodies right now.

I do appreciate that saying this here on this site is a losing battle, because meta.SO has an embedded culture of commenting. So even though month-old comments are clutter across just about the whole network, meta.SO cannot and will not recognise that. Sometimes the needs of meta.SO, and the Stack Exchange network, coincide. And some times they do not.

My thanks to the commenters for pointing out that people have already tried to justified the keeping of comments; reading this attempts at justifications emphatically shows that the collateral damage would be absolutely tiny compared to the advantage of removing all the clutter.

Comments can be constructive when they ask for clarifications of a question or answer. Such clarifications should then be edited into the question or answer. Ideally, that would happen, and then the comment should be flagged as outdated, and can be deleted. That's not happening at the moment, and we're left with a lot of clutter.

So, I propose a sweeper bot that deletes all comments more than a month old. A month is more than enough time to enable a poster to update their post in light of the content of the comments. If it hasn't happened after a month, it's probably never going to happen. Any other content should either be edited into the answer, or provided as an alternate answer.

Meta.SO does have an embedded culture of commenting. So comments are more highly valued here; but that's not necessarily representative of the whole Stack Exchange, nor of Stack Overflow.

There would be a very very small amount of collateral damage. And there would be a huge amount of decluttering, making questions and good answers stand out much more.

Post Undeleted by George Stocker
Post Deleted by casperOne
incorporating useful conclusions from the comments
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The only constructive use for comments is to ask for clarification of a question or answer. Such clarifications should then be edited into the question or answer.

So, any given comment should quickly become obsolete.

So, I propose a sweeper bot that deletes all comments more than a month old.

And to anticipate the howls of protest: if there is any content in comments that you value, then put it into question or answer bodies right now.

I do appreciate that saying this here on this site is a losing battle, because meta.SO has an embedded culture of commenting. So even though month-old comments are clutter across just about the whole network, meta.SO cannot and will not recognise that. Sometimes the needs of meta.SO, and the Stack Exchange network, coincide. And some times they do not.

My thanks to the commenters for pointing out that people have already tried to justified the keeping of comments; reading this attempts at justifications emphatically shows that the collateral damage would be absolutely tiny compared to the advantage of removing all the clutter.

The only constructive use for comments is to ask for clarification of a question or answer. Such clarifications should then be edited into the question or answer.

So, any given comment should quickly become obsolete.

So, I propose a sweeper bot that deletes all comments more than a month old.

And to anticipate the howls of protest: if there is any content in comments that you value, then put it into question or answer bodies right now.

I do appreciate that saying this here on this site is a losing battle, because meta.SO has an embedded culture of commenting. So even though month-old comments are clutter across just about the whole network, meta.SO cannot and will not recognise that. Sometimes the needs of meta.SO, and the Stack Exchange network, coincide. And some times they do not.

The only constructive use for comments is to ask for clarification of a question or answer. Such clarifications should then be edited into the question or answer.

So, any given comment should quickly become obsolete.

So, I propose a sweeper bot that deletes all comments more than a month old.

And to anticipate the howls of protest: if there is any content in comments that you value, then put it into question or answer bodies right now.

I do appreciate that saying this here on this site is a losing battle, because meta.SO has an embedded culture of commenting. So even though month-old comments are clutter across just about the whole network, meta.SO cannot and will not recognise that. Sometimes the needs of meta.SO, and the Stack Exchange network, coincide. And some times they do not.

My thanks to the commenters for pointing out that people have already tried to justified the keeping of comments; reading this attempts at justifications emphatically shows that the collateral damage would be absolutely tiny compared to the advantage of removing all the clutter.

added 359 characters in body
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410 gone
410 gone
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  • 3
  • 31
  • 47

The only constructive use for comments is to ask for clarification of a question or answer. Such clarifications should then be edited into the question or answer.

So, any given comment should quickly become obsolete.

So, I propose a sweeper bot that deletes all comments more than a month old.

And to anticipate the howls of protest: if there is any content in comments that you value, then put it into question or answer bodies right now.

I do appreciate that saying this here on this site is a losing battle, because meta.SO has an embedded culture of commenting. So even though month-old comments are clutter across just about the whole network, meta.SO cannot and will not recognise that. Sometimes the needs of meta.SO, and the Stack Exchange network, coincide. And some times they do not.

The only constructive use for comments is to ask for clarification of a question or answer. Such clarifications should then be edited into the question or answer.

So, any given comment should quickly become obsolete.

So, I propose a sweeper bot that deletes all comments more than a month old.

And to anticipate the howls of protest: if there is any content in comments that you value, then put it into question or answer bodies right now.

The only constructive use for comments is to ask for clarification of a question or answer. Such clarifications should then be edited into the question or answer.

So, any given comment should quickly become obsolete.

So, I propose a sweeper bot that deletes all comments more than a month old.

And to anticipate the howls of protest: if there is any content in comments that you value, then put it into question or answer bodies right now.

I do appreciate that saying this here on this site is a losing battle, because meta.SO has an embedded culture of commenting. So even though month-old comments are clutter across just about the whole network, meta.SO cannot and will not recognise that. Sometimes the needs of meta.SO, and the Stack Exchange network, coincide. And some times they do not.

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