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    You raise really good points and its obviously a bit of a ticky problem. Some things we are thinking about to resolve this is to first add more user settings for things like always keeping comments defaulted to collapsed and more notification settings. We believe there is a path that can be created to convert comments into Q&A pairs. But we first wanted to start with making these UI & functionality changes to see if the existing users comment more and enjoy the more permissive commenting experience. It might be that it changes nothing without users who currently have the privilege. Commented Apr 28 at 21:19
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    We do plan to discuss directly with all mods later this week on what their thoughts are from the moderation angle so that we can address those potential issues more directly. Commented Apr 28 at 21:22
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    @Hoid users will most probably comment more and enjoy the more permissive commenting experience. However, this will come at the expense of cluttering the content and diluting the Q&A format. Users will post answers, questions, and unrelated discussions in comments. It will be harder to find what you are looking for among all the clutter, good content will not float to the top, bad content will not be downvoted, closed as duplicate, put in a review queue, etc. This will make Stack Overflow and other SE sites much less useful for future visitors, which will bring site visits and engagement down. Commented Apr 29 at 7:04
  • Yeah I can see this being a classic "new coke" product testing error: "People respond really positively in the short term to all this extra sugar! Let's launch it! ...wait, why in the long term do fewer and fewer keep coming back?" Commented Apr 30 at 15:45