- Comment distribution
Comment distribution
If comments were spread evenly, 2.75 comments on each and every post seems not overwhelming. But if a few questions gather many comments (like How do you decide when to go home for the day?) the problem can be quite noticable. For moderators especially, the automated "too many comments" flag ensures that such posts are noticed.
Comment length
A few short comments are less problematic (at least in terms of space used) compared to the same number of long comments. We are working on making single-line comments take just one line, which could further reduce the space consumed by short comments. (On the other hand, long comments tend to be higher quality. See the next point.)
Comment quality
I tend to think that comments on Skeptics, Mi Yodeya, Christianity, History, and Philosophy (the sites on the 2.5+ comments per post list that I'm familiar with) are fairly constructive on the whole. There aren't many +1 comments as I recall. If comments are mostly of the chatty sort on The Workplace and not helpful in clarifying the post they are attached to, there could very well be a growing problem that's not reflected in any statistic. Given my reading of the linked meta posts, it sounds as if the quality of comments, rather than their volume per se, is the problem here.
If comments were spread evenly, 2.75 comments on each and every post seems not overwhelming. But if a few questions gather many comments (like How do you decide when to go home for the day?) the problem can be quite noticable. For moderators especially, the automated "too many comments" flag ensures that such posts are noticed.
- Comment length
A few short comments are less problematic (at least in terms of space used) compared to the same number of long comments. We are working on making single-line comments take just one line, which could further reduce the space consumed by short comments. (On the other hand, long comments tend to be higher quality. See the next point.)
- Comment quality
I tend to think that comments on Skeptics, Mi Yodeya, Christianity, History, and Philosophy (the sites on the 2.5+ comments per post list that I'm familiar with) are fairly constructive on the whole. There aren't many +1 comments as I recall. If comments are mostly of the chatty sort on The Workplace and not helpful in clarifying the post they are attached to, there could very well be a growing problem that's not reflected in any statistic. Given my reading of the linked meta posts, it sounds as if the quality of comments, rather than their volume per se, is the problem here.
