Is it OK to make the same comment on every answer?

Question

Recently, I saw someone make the same comment on every answer to a question. In isolation, the comments were in my opinion reasonable, but collectively, they suggested a broader issue. Specifically, either:

• The commenter correctly identified a problem with every answer, which implies the question is somehow encouraging people to post bad answers (perhaps because the average person does not have direct personal experience with polyamory?). This should be discussed on Meta, so that the problem can be more fully studied and resolved.
• The commenter incorrectly identified a problem with every answer. The comments are noise and should be removed.

So I flagged one of them for moderator attention, specifically noted that the comment had been made on every answer, and suggested that it was unconstructive and perhaps should be taken to meta. This flag was declined. Additionally, the commenter now appears to have gotten into a comment argument with one of the answerers, but I'm not going to flag it a second time given that my previous flag was apparently erroneous.

Why was this flag declined? What should I have done instead of flagging?

Answer 1

Why was this flag declined?

I was not the moderator that handled your flag, but I can see why it was declined. This is a case of nr. 1: the commenter directly identified a problem with every answer. We love answers that include back-up, be that personal experience or sources. This has been discussed on meta several times, most recently here.

Mass comments might not always be the most useful and personal touch you can use on this site. Sometimes a personalized approach feels nicer, and leaves more room to pointing out more specific parts of a post you'd like to see clarified/improved. But if there are many answers to a question, and none of them are backed up with experience or sources, then yes, a mass comment is probably going to save you a lot of time. They're not forbidden, as long as they are actually suggesting an improvement or asking for more clarification, and are nice when doing that. (So no mass comments saying: 'You idiot, you forgot the backup. Add it or I'll kill this post with fire').

What should I have done instead of flagging?

If you see comments that are clearly asking for clarification or suggesting improvements, feel free to upvote them instead of flagging. We really could use the help in getting across the message that this site isn't for opinions, but for answers that are based on experience or sources.

Additionally, the commenter now appears to have gotten into a comment argument with one of the answerers, but I'm not going to flag it a second time given that my previous flag was apparently erroneous.

Asking for back-up is one thing, but arguing about the validity of an answer isn't so great. Once you see comments that are no longer asking for clarification or suggesting improvements, you can safely flag them as 'no longer needed'. There's no need for a custom moderator flag, just use the standard flag.

Here is a meta-answer written by another moderator, which does a very good job of explaining the difference between a comment that does point out bad advice (but written in a non-constructive way) and a comment that does a good job of asking for an explanation.

Answer 2

Since I'm not a moderator I cannot comment on the specifics about why your flag was declined.

We haven't had a problem with mass comments like the one you are describing. I don't think it's necessary at this time for us to create a policy either. Existing policies should be enough to manage such actions. If a comment isn't requesting clarification or suggesting an improvement it should be flagged as no longer needed. If there is a user being actively disruptive you can always flag one of their posts for moderator attention, and clearly explain what the problem is to them.

On this site we have an expectation that answers are more substantial and are backed up by supporting arguments or personal experience. It is entirely appropriate to suggest people improve their answers by editing them to add supporting arguments or relevant experience. Many of the comments that were left were when taken individually entirely appropriate. There are plenty of situations where similar to identical comments are left on posts, such as when welcoming new users or asking people to edit their answers to be more than just telling the OP to do the thing. There is nothing inherently problematic about leaving identical comments on a bunch of posts provided that they are relevant to the post.

It's incredibly reductive to assume that there was either a problem with every post or there was a problem with none of the posts. What's more likely is that enough of the answers exhibited the same issue, a pattern was noticed and they got overzealous with the comments.

Answer 3

It's not OK to leave the same challenging comment on every answer with the purpose of expressing disagreement

I flagged the same mildly rude, inappropriate and challenging behavior and I got declined as well. We can only guess the specific reason in this case, but you probably already noticed that, here on IPS, flags related to users above 10k are rarely, if ever, considered.

The commenter incorrectly identified a problem with every answer. The comments are noise and should be removed.

This is definitely the case. Maybe not "noise", but surely in violation of the "Be nice" policy. It shows one instance where a user did not leave the comments to actually suggest some improvements, but instead chose to challenge every single answerer he disagrees with.

This is not the right way to do so. Especially since the same user provided much more useful guidance here on Meta:

Your disagreement doesn't make the answer a straw man, or a political rant, it's still just an answer that you happen to personally disagree with. [...] Trying to argue someone into changing their answer into what you personally think the answer ought to be is just a huge waste of time and, more often than not, leads to arguing in circles.

This is a stunning answer and one I very much agree with. Given that this guidance is actually very good, I would suggest that people follow it (especially the very same author of the post).

the commenter now appears to have gotten into a comment argument with one of the answerers

In Italian we call this to preach well and to poke around badly, meaning you say something and then you go on doing something else.

That's what happened here. As far as the rules are on SE, we are all required to respect other users and the "be nice" policy. Even if some 10k+ users sometimes forget, or even if occasionally some mods think their status provides special privileges for avoiding the policy.

Answer 4

There's nothing wrong with asking answers to "back it up" this has been discussed to death on meta. Please do not flag comments asking for answers to be supported.

I made the comments because it looked like a pattern was repeating itself...

It's something that I've been becoming growingly concerned about, particularly when it comes to niche subjects where the majority of people probably don't have direct experience. Namely that people tend to write answers to questions that they don't really know the answers to, don't know that they don't know, and then are voted to the top by all the other folks who don't know.

These take a lot of forms, but the most common tend to be "this seems like common sense to me", but they don't seem to realize that their version of common sense may not fit the less common circumstances of the question being asked.

Having had experience with the situation being asked about in the question, it was fairly easy to spot some of the more obvious problems with some of the answers, and it felt fairly obvious that some of these were most likely written by people who didn't know that they didn't know.

What are you basing this answer on? Do you have any relevant experience? Have you actually done this before?

Seemed like a good way to get people to back up what they were asserting as answers to the question. Or at the very least help future readers evaluate whether these answers were speculative, based on reasonable theory, based on related experience, or based in actual practice.

In a couple of cases I suspected that answerers did have direct experience, but it wasn't stated in the answer, so I thought that the same comment applied.

Admittedly I tend to place a little more value on answers based on actual experience and practice. "I've been there and done this" sounds better, to me, than "I've never been in that situation, nor do I know anyone who has, but I think this is how this works"