With the recent enhancements to flagging of comments, it appears that more comments are getting flagged and the mods are responding by deleting more comments. This seems to be happening more now than it used to.

When those comments are deleted by a mod, there is no notification to the author and no history to see what happened or why it happened.

This has the following downsides:

1. The author has no chance to learn how to better use the site or what they did wrong with their comment. My analogy is it's kind of like sending a four year old to sit in the corner for 15 minutes, but not telling them why. It has little chance of modifying behavior for the better and is guaranteed to make them mad. Just like we know that's not a good way to parent, that's also not a good way to moderate.

2. If the author somehow discovers that their content was deleted without any notification or history, they will wonder what happened, wonder what else they wrote might have been silently deleted and begin to question the whole transparency of SO which is otherwise very good (all of those happened to me when my comment was silently deleted).

3. The whole notion that you should just "expect comments to be deleted" does not fit with the overall nature of SO. Comments are the only way we have to communicate with other users on the site (outside of writing an answer). Sure, if you clearly violate terms of service, then certainly content can be deleted, but even then the author should be notified and be given some idea why (even if it's just tagged with a broad category). If a mod can't even take the time to click one broad area choice for why it's being deleted and the SO system can't notify them that their content was deleted and communicate that broad category of reason, then the system is really not working to the benefit of everyone.

4. I am now seeing comments get deleted because they "might" trigger an off-topic or undesirable discussion. IMO, that's not right. Comments should get deleted when they do go in a wrong direction, not because they might go in a wrong direction.

If you want stackoverflow to continue with its excellent architecture of transparency, want users to learn from their mistakes and improve their behavior, want users to continue to trust the content on stackoverflow, then users need to be notified anytime one of their comments is deleted with at least a broad reason for why.

Silently deleting user content is a slippery slope that I think we all want stackoverflow to stay far away from.

With the recent enhancements to flagging of comments, it appears that more comments are getting flagged and the mods are responding by deleting more comments. This seems to be happening more now than it used to.

When those comments are deleted by a mod, there is no notification to the author and no history to see what happened or why it happened.

This has the following downsides:

1. The author has no chance to learn how to better use the site or what they did wrong with their comment. My analogy is it's kind of like sending a four-year-old to sit in the corner for 15 minutes, but not telling them why. It has little chance of modifying behavior for the better and is guaranteed to make them mad. Just like we know that's not a good way to parent, that's also not a good way to moderate.

2. If the author somehow discovers that their content was deleted without any notification or history, they will wonder what happened, wonder what else they wrote might have been silently deleted and begin to question the whole transparency of SO which is otherwise very good (all of those happened to me when my comment was silently deleted).

3. The whole notion that you should just "expect comments to be deleted" does not fit with the overall nature of SO. Comments are the only way we have to communicate with other users on the site (outside of writing an answer). Sure, if you clearly violate terms of service, then certainly content can be deleted, but even then the author should be notified and be given some idea why (even if it's just tagged with a broad category). If a mod can't even take the time to click one broad area choice for why it's being deleted and the SO system can't notify them that their content was deleted and communicate that broad category of reason, then the system is really not working to the benefit of everyone.

4. I am now seeing comments get deleted because they "might" trigger an off-topic or undesirable discussion. IMO, that's not right. Comments should get deleted when they do go in a wrong direction, not because they might go in a wrong direction.

If you want Stack Overflow to continue with its excellent architecture of transparency, want users to learn from their mistakes and improve their behavior, want users to continue to trust the content on Stack Overflow, then users need to be notified anytime one of their comments is deleted with at least a broad reason for why.

Silently deleting user content is a slippery slope that I think we all want Stack Overflow to stay far away from.

With the recent enhancements to flagging of comments, it appears that more comments are getting flagged and the mods are responding by deleting more comments. This seems to be happening more now than it used to.

When those comments are deleted by a mod, there is no notification to the author and no history to see what happened or why it happened.

This has the following downsides:

1. The author has no chance to learn how to better use the site or what they did wrong with their comment. My analogy is it's kind of like sending a four year old to sit in the corner for 15 minutes, but not telling them why. It has little chance of modifying behavior for the better and is guaranteed to make them mad. Just like we know that's not a good way to parent, that's also not a good way to moderate.

2. If the author somehow discovers that their content was deleted without any notification or history, they will wonder what happened, wonder what else they wrote might have been silently deleted and begin to question the whole transparency of SO which is otherwise very good (all of those happened to me when my comment was silently deleted).

3. The whole notion that you should just "expect comments to be deleted" does not fit with the overall nature of SO. Comments are the only way we have to communicate with other users on the site (outside of writing an answer). Sure, if you clearly violate terms of service, then certainly content can be deleted, but even then the author should be notified and be given some idea why (even if it's just tagged with a broad category). If a mod can't even take the time to click one broad area choice for why it's being deleted and the SO system can't notify them that their content was deleted and communicate that broad category of reason, then the system is really not working to the benefit of everyone.

4. I am now seeing comments get deleted because they "might" trigger an off-topic or undesirable discussion. IMO, that's not right. Comments should get deleted when they do go in a wrong direction, not because they might go in a wrong direction.

If you want stackoverflow to continue with its excellent architecture of transparency, want users to learn from their mistakes and improve their behavior, want users to continue to trust the content on stackoverflow, then users need to be notified anytime one of their comments is deleted with at least a broad reason for why.

Silently deleting user content is a slippery slope that I think we all want stackoverflow to stay far away from.

With the recent enhancements to flagging of comments, it appears that more comments are getting flagged and the mods are responding by deleting more comments. This seems to be happening more now than it used to.

When those comments are deleted by a mod, there is no notification to the author and no history to see what happened or why it happened.

This has the following downsides:

1. The author has no chance to learn how to better use the site or what they did wrong with their comment. My analogy is it's kind of like sending a four year old to sit in the corner for 15 minutes, but not telling them why. It has little chance of modifying behavior for the better and is guaranteed to make them mad. Just like we know that's not a good way to parent, that's also not a good way to moderate.

2. If the author somehow discovers that their content was deleted without any notification or history, they will wonder what happened, wonder what else they wrote might have been silently deleted and begin to question the whole transparency of SO which is otherwise very good (all of those happened to me when my comment was silently deleted).

3. The whole notion that you should just "expect comments to be deleted" does not fit with the overall nature of SO. Comments are the only way we have to communicate with other users on the site (outside of writing an answer). Sure, if you clearly violate terms of service, then certainly content can be deleted, but even then the author should be notified and be given some idea why (even if it's just tagged with a broad category). If a mod can't even take the time to click one broad area choice for why it's being deleted and the SO system can't notify them that their content was deleted and communicate that broad category of reason, then the system is really not working to the benefit of everyone.

4. I am now seeing comments get deleted because they "might" trigger an off-topic or undesirable discussion. IMO, that's not right. Comments should get deleted when they do go in a wrong direction, not because they might go in a wrong direction.

If you want stackoverflow to continue with its excellent architecture of transparency, want users to learn from their mistakes and improve their behavior, want users to continue to trust the content on stackoverflow, then users need to be notified anytime one of their comments is deleted with at least a broad reason for why.

Silently deleting user content is a slippery slope that I think we all want stackoverflow to stay far away from.