IOW, let's not ignore the possibility that you might be wrong. I dunno this moderator, and I seldom lurk on politics.SE, nothing more, but I do know calling out on meta and commenting with "I've raised your misbehavior" is less likely to be a productive use of anyone's time

@user76284 I'm not saying they couldn't possibly have been biased, I'm just saying you need further demonstration of what transpired

Say, I'm guessing you're saying the deleted comments opposed their view, and the ones that remain don't.

Well, just say that.

Then?

And these critiques sparked a long-enough conversation to detract from the answer.

How many comments were deleted (roughly)?

someone said it was 30+ comments

which... is certainly enough to warrant a massive deletion of comments

sure

So, the gist of the misbehavior is deleting a large number of on-topic comments, right?

more relevant, according to your interpretation of the guidelines

@πάνταῥεῖ that was random

> I and others made comments explicitly allowed by the guidelines as constructive criticisms

who gets to decide what is constructive?

well, moderators, of course

So if you weren't certain of ill intent, why assume it? I don't wanna fall into the trap of being accusatory myself, I just know that very long comment threads are commonly entirely purged

So there's just disagreement of which comments were more valuable

@user76284 Not really, I've selected that very consciously ;-)

you can't decide that your comments were constructive

We can see the answer, with 52 upvotes, and reading it doesn't lead me to think that a lengthy debate under the answer is warranted; the author gets notifications as the discussion continues. If that happened under one of our posts we'd probably appreciate the moderator deleting the discussion and warning about further pinging. Here is the moderator's message:

who moderates the moderators?

@user76284 well, let's see what we have. A meta post accusing a mod of misbehavior, thinking certain comments in a chain of 30 shouldn't have been deleted, and be restored, but there is no reasoning as to why or what the contents of those comments were. How do you want this ordeal to proceed, exactly?

well, employees do. the CM team.

you can certainly bring up problems to said group, but... outside of that you have no real power

Depends upon how they improve the answer, and the value of the author reading them, @user76284

@user76284 Back to square one (or two?), the tone is that of a hearing in a court trial, not calm discussion of how to avoid such outcomes in the future, or considering if the mod was right in doing so

@user400654 The meta moderators?

What actions of the moderator you have presented are not necessarily abusive behavior.

Stupid English.

neither is coming out swinging with "MOD ABUSE MOD ABUSE" without being able to provide any kind of proof of abuse. It's unfortunate that you can't obtain it because you aren't a mod, but that's a side of effect of the way the system is designed. The better approach would be to simply ask why all of the comments were removed, while leaving the ones that remain.

but... i can already tell you why the majority were deleted

@user76284 I have seen nothing resembling mod abuse yet. Mod abuse would be to delete comments that opposed their view, to impose authority and silence the opposition in an argument. 30 definitely on-topic comments under a post are definitely unacceptable though, except under meta discussions.

It's no one's fault, but the comments would need to deleted anyway.

Which remaining comments do you have a problem with?

There's a button under every post AFAIK, that purges the entire comment thread. This mod has taken their extra time to select a few and delete the rest, and they're feeling the heat for it

just the one?

@user76284 "taste" doesn't make it wrong. Moderators are there to make choices. Now you disagree with those choices, and think comment X shouldn't be deleted but Y should be, that doesn't make it abuse

i only see one comment that i think you might be referring to.

The rest appear to be related to the deletion itself

or came after

@user76284 It can be abuse if it's to silence the opposition, which you said isn't true.

I only see one comment before the mod's comment explaining the deletion.

You said it's more complex than that, but then simply repeated what you said before.

Is deleting comments abuse?

If I decide to close a question because I think it's unclear and leave the other one open because it's not unclear, which can be referred to as my "taste", am I abusing my close privileges?

Do you have any proof whatsoever that the mod has any stance on this subject at all?

where?

i wouldn't have asked if i had already seen it.

@user76284 Yet they were too many, and an answer shouldn't have a trail of thirty comments under it, no matter how constructive they are.

It doesn't have to do with the content of the comments but their number.

And the moderator believes the comment they left needed to be left there, and the rest didn't. This isn't abuse, you just disagree.

That's been explained a few times

Which can still be discussed on meta, but not on a post hell bent on assuming ill intent.

I think I've said all that I could possibly have.

of course it can be abuse. but is it?

@user76284 I'm saying a moderator can do their job.

noone on that meta or here can make that decision in any official capacity that matters.

it's up to the other mods on that site and staff.

@user76284 Which can be discussed on meta, but not with calling them out and their "misbehavior"

🔄

Nope, cute pictures aren't working.

Gotta read a meta rant to lighten up the mood

Is it Egyptian?

Wow, backward argument of the year

@Rob I strongly suspect Sha is an alien, but don't tell him

hmm.. i actually agree with that idea... to an extent

not that they should use their real names/likenesses

but an avatar/name that isn't the default, one that could be recognizable

SO mods used to get death threats back in 2012

in other words not my avatar or name as it currently is

@user76284 That makes sense

Unless you start the comment with some antagonizing comment on mod actions and it ends up deleted again

There are loads of things you can do instead of that meta post, but now that you've posted it, let's just see how it goes

@user76284 Actually, I'm almost dead on my keyboard, it's 3 a.m.

Good night usernumbernumber, the other usernumbernumber, and @Rob the background guy

𓃬𓏢

@user76284 that's kind of the problem though. That's not what comments are for. They are temporary notes. No comment is supposed to be an attachment on an answer forever. When they are no longer useful or have been declined it are causing issues, they get deleted.

If you see vital issues with an answer and the person isn't amenable to changing it, you make a better answer.

And let the voting system take care of it over time

> someone was wrong on the internet

@user76284 yes, they permit making the comments. That's different from saying that comments that meet that most be left up forever.

technically incorrect... in your opinion, right?

Right but that's never been the intent for how comments are supposed to be used.

so, yeah, opinion

@AndrasDeak yeah the fact that the voting system sometimes breaks down or is very slow it's quite frustrating. I've been there.

So enable the workaround :P Speaking generally of course; I have no idea which specific teapot this tempest is in

a lot of the dynamics on SO/SE are workarounds

@user76284 no comments have always been intended to function astemporary notes. That is also explicitly laid out in the guidelines as well. I'm not sure why you continue to ignore that.

comments that are deemed useful sometimes stay around until they deemed are no longer useful.

or until a random person flags them and another random mod deletes them in turn

i mean

that'd be a case of someone deeming it no longer useful, no?

assuming that the flagger and/or the mod made a conscious choice rather than just mashing the keyboard, yes

as far as i'm aware there are no keyboard shortcuts that would result in such a flag being cast

I mean I'd hope mods are not just mindlessly haven't any flags

*handling

@Rubiksmoose I've heard at least one mod (maybe two) on SO explicitly say that he "literally don't think about handling comment flags"

Well I have no idea how SO mods even work at that scale. To their credit 99% of the time there's no issue deleting comments that are flagged in my experience.

😶

@Rubiksmoose yes, because one can always claim that comments are ephemeral :)

perfect crime, so to speak (of course it's not a crime, but you know what I mean)

On SO, comments aren't political

usually not; true

how are you gonna claim that a mod deleted comments because they are biased when the comments are criticizing a programming problem/solution, lol.

they only delete the JS comments

if it's opinion based it should be deleted wholesale anyway

gotta keep the jQuery ones around tho

$($)

OK, so it's not a mod who said it ;)

Close enough lol