there isn't a problem. See how they all can be flagged?

@KevinB The last one was flagged by me, you can tell by its colour. The others were flagged by others. The problem exists because intelligent people shouldn't be leaving these types of comments in the first place.

I don't disagree, but no amount of blog/twitter posts or just in time warnings is going to stop this. This is the internet, the only way to stop these kinds of responses would be to stop all responses.

The least we can do is stop the repeat offenders by flagging appropriately.

@KevinB look at the last comment, when I flagged it 12 hours had gone by. I find that shocking, a new user had that comment hanging around for half a day, was I the only one to have flagged it? Maybe I was.

You might have been, but what difference does that make? What can we as a community do to change that? We've already made it easier than ever to figure out how to cast flags on comments.

@KevinB What can we as a community do to change that? one thing we can do is to admit that there is a problem, and stop kidding ourselves that actually things aren't too bad. They are. The unfriendly reputation Stack Exchange has online didn't happen overnight, and it's not limited to Stack Overflow either.

so... there's a minor problem... that's useless if it's a problem we can't take any actions against.

"unfriendly reputation...didn't happen overnight" True, it took about a month: meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/9953/1

A detail: in addition to the diamond, are the authors of those comments regular contributors to the site?

Haha! I already know who posted the ELU comments, just from experience. +1.

I have no idea what's wrong with the english/English comment. If explaining that capitalization matters in posts, by giving examples where it matters, is unwelcoming, then it's clearly time to stop all commenting.

Completely a side note: in my experience, Americans tend to refer to a GP as a PCP (primary care physician). Canadians, on the other hand, use "family doctor", at least in Ontario. Dialects are fascinating.

The second to last one is just someone with a somewhat radical opinion going off on an usual diatribe. Not sure this fits into the "unwelcoming" category so much as "blatant and unapologetic trolling". Not like that had any chance of being left up after someone with the power to delete it saw it.

@NathanTuggy If capitalisation actually made that question ambiguous (which seems unlikely to me), one might have said so directly; if it didn't, editing the question with an appropriate edit summary might well have been enough. Either way, "I don't think that's the word you're looking for" followed by that (relatively) long list of examples sets a rather condescending tone.

@Magisch "Not sure this fits into the 'unwelcoming' category so much as 'blatant and unapologetic trolling'." -- Why not both?

@NathanTuggy if there was nothing wrong about the E/english comment, why was it deleted then? I got a "helpful" response to my flag. But it's not the correction that is at fault here, it's the tone and condescending attitude. The user was asking how to write something in "english". This was a new contributor whose first language wasn't English. And, finally, note the diamond, the welcoming and friendly comment was posted by a mod. In newspeak double-plus-ungood.

@Mari-LouA The fact that mods are deleting comments like that is a major problem and needs to be fixed. A flag like that should be declined, not marked helpful. Pointing out something that's wrong and explaining why it's wrong and how to fix it, is very helpful. Just refusing to tell anyone whenever they make a mistake because you giving people useful information "condescending" isn't useful. If you really believe that then why is anyone here in the first place?

@Servy oh come on, it could have been a simple typo, does anyone need to be lectured like that, on their first post? Pretending not to know that the question was about English and not the game of cricket. How about just editing the post and tidying up the formatting at the same time? How about saying: "Hi, remember that in English, words for nationalities are always capitalised, e.g. American not "american"? Isn't that a more approachable stance, you're correcting an error but without making them look stupid.

@Mari-LouA Giving example usages rather than just a dry explanation when the target audience is non-native speakers seems entirely appropriate. If you think it's too lengthy of an explanation that's one thing, but claiming that it's offensive and needs to be deleted is radically different than saying it's a longer explanation than you think was needed. Again, you shouldn't consider anyone telling anyone else about their mistake and teaching them how to avoid making it in the future as "trying to make them look stupid". We're literally here to help people learn things.

@Servy Which comment as a new user would you have preferred? The one lecturing you about "english" meaning the spin of a gold or cricket ball or explaining that nationalities are always capitalised in English. Which one would help you understand your mistake better? The comment was patronising and it was deleted. Besides the OP's question was not about the spelling of "English", it was about something totally different.

@Mari-LouA Probably the former for me. But again, you feeling that a comment is not as good of an explanation as you'd like is one thing, you saying it's offensive is radically different. Neither is offensive, regardless of which is more effective at teaching a given person. Again, if you consider it offensive to you to have someone explain something that someone appears to not understand, then why are you here, given that that's the whole point of this site.

@Mari-LouA Correcting a mistake in the question that doesn't solve the problem being asked about is a perfectly fine comment. It means that it wouldn't be appropriate to post that as an answer. It doesn't make it inappropriate as a comment. It's one of the main reasons comments exist.

@Servy If you cannot place yourself in the shoes of someone posting their first question on an English website and receiving that type of correction, when your question was totally unrelated to the spelling of the word English, which is an easy enought typo to commit on smartphones, and a common error for non-native speakers then I have nothing more to say or add. And in speech we don't hear if words are capitalised or not, so saying that "March" is totally different from "march" is imprecise, because in speech and with context, we would understand which meaning is being referred to.

@Mari-LouA That I don't get offended when someone corrects a mistake of mine doesn't mean I can't place myself in the shoes of someone who's new and makes a mistake asking a question. Just assuming anyone claiming to be interested in hearing explanations of a mistake that they made, and that who isn't offended by them, couldn't possibly empathize with someone isn't very empathetic of you.

This entire discussion just reinforces that we just. Shouldn't. Comment. Ever. Curators are expected to spend an inordinate amount of effort ensuring that their attempts to help can't be construed as offensive, no matter how hard the reader tries to skew it. While the comment about capitalization can be seen as offensive...I can also see it as giving a lesson in proper English writing, where capitalization does matter. What happened to assuming good faith? Are we just supposed to coddle new users and attack anyone who doesn't entire conform to a (fuzzy) standard of, "welcoming"?