All comments for a Q&A disappearing with no explanation [duplicate]

Question

I was reading It seems as though my employer wants me to come into work when I'm ill. Am I missing something?, and when I clicked on the "more comments" link the comments all disappeared, leaving 0 comments.

Then, after reading one of the high-rated answers, I was again reading the comments and clicked on "more comments" only to have the same thing happen again.

There was no explanation comment left behind, not even a "Moved to chat" or "Deleted: canned explanation". If the comments were all off-topic, or terrible, or otherwise useless perhaps that could be understandable. But I know that at least some of the comments were specifically appropriate comment uses, such as explaining a down-vote - specifically what comments are for.

Were these comments all deleted? If so, were appropriate comments simply and unfortunately swept up in a mass delete because of other lesser quality comments?

I understand completely that "comments are transient and should not be expected to be permanent entities," but neither should we expect them to simply vanish without a trace, especially at the whim of a drive-by deleter, so I am not sure if this was perhaps a bug that lost comments or a deliberate action. So the tag might get changed to bug depending on how the discussion goes.

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This question received the "possible duplicate" banner for me, suggesting it is the same as Reason for deleting comments?. I have clicked the "This is not the same question" link since the answer to that question would not sufficiently answer this question. Someone stating the guidelines for what comments are and what comments are not would by itself not answer my question at all, and what is left of the answer for that question addresses the specific issues of that other Q&A thread which, by definition, do not address the specific issues of the Q&A thread questioned here. Since reading that other answer would not have answered this question, I have marked it as "not a duplicate".

Answer 1

I just shoveled all the comments on the answer, including previously-deleted ones, into a chat room. You can decide for yourself what of it is of value.

SE does encourage explanations of downvotes. The problem is when the explanation itself asserts a position -- which somebody (the post author or otherwise) then feels the need to respond to, and then somebody responds to that, and then we have a discussion or argument in the comments. If we leave the explanation we get accused of bias ("you kept his opinion but not mine!"). If we flush or even move it all we get accused of censorship. (Yeah, I've lost track of the number of times I've been accused of censorship for relocating comments to publicly-visible chat.)

The best way to ensure that your downvote explanation remains is to focus on improving the post. Instead of saying "you're wrong because (300 characters of strong opinion)", try to ask questions like "how do you account for (problem)?" or "what is your source for X?", or request changes ("can you explain that part about X more clearly?").

Comments are not your soapbox for opinions and arguments. That doesn't mean you can't raise issues with a post, though -- just be sure to focus it on improving the post, not winning points for your side.

In an ironic twist, the comments on Lilienthal's answer to this meta question are out of control and attracting flags. I'm just gonna let that stand as an object lesson for now.

Answer 2

Were these comments all deleted?

Yes.

If so, were appropriate comments simply and unfortunately swept up in a mass delete because of other lesser quality comments?

There were no appropriate comments there as far as I can see. While I didn't delete them, I would have done the same.

Comments are intended to request clarification from the OP and little else. We might give very useful comments that are in a gray area a pass but typically when comments reach critical mass we either Move to Chat (and delete) or just delete ("purge") all the comments. Sometimes we undelete useful comments. Very often there's nothing worth keeping. Very rarely we forget to undelete something useful or delete something that had value. But that's not what happened here.

Comments on answers are a bit different, as are our reasons for why we might decide to purge a thread. Typically we do so when a comment chain has devolved into bickering or has otherwise become unproductive. On the answer you were looking at a few users disagreed with the advice given and a discussion followed that seems to have had run its course and where we all that could really be done by the users involved is agree to disagree. At that point we typically purge threads to avoid things spiralling (further) out of control.

A good place to start reading up on comments on Workplace is: "What comments are not..."

I understand completely that "comments are transient and should not be expected to be permanent entities," but neither should we expect them to simply vanish without a trace

Well, that's exactly what "comments are transient" means. They vanish without a trace. No one except for moderators can see deleted comments.

especially at the whim of a drive-by deleter

Well, those "drive-by deleters" are community-elected moderators like myself. We aren't hacking away at comments for the fun of it. Comment cleanup is the mod task that we on Workplace probably spend most of our time on. This site tends to get rather verbose. We delete comments en masse to avoid turning this into shouting match or forum.

when I clicked on the "more comments" link the comments all disappeared, leaving 0 comments.

That's due to how Stack Exchange handle page updates. While you get a notification that new answers or comments where added, there's no such immediate feedback for deleted questions. While you were looking at the post a moderator purged the thread so as soon as you try to load the comments they'll disappear.