Why is the use of comments limited to clarification?

Question

I love Stack Exchange sites because of the amount of knowledge and people sharing it.

One of the best thing is that here you can find real people, sharing your interests and job experience. It's a human site, not a bunch of computer data like you can find on wikis.

This is possible imho thanks to comments. Thanks to comments we can express our opinions, enhance our point of views, have fun, share links and useful resources, etc.

To me, comments are underrated and they can be used more effectively to enhance user experience, without making the site a holy-war place of course.

Please don't say "you can continue discussion in chat". In chat you can find 3 people sleeping, and chat rooms are not good for specified arguments. We have thousands of questions on specific topics, and only two chat rooms... wonder why? because chat rooms are good oldie useless '90.

I think somewhere comments (not merely clarifications) should find their place to allow pacific discussion and view sharing. How about a collapsed box next to the question? If you want to look at it and take place just click it to show other comments, otherwise you won't get distracted by those.

Edit

Just for clarification, I never talked about forums! Those sucks as much as the chat here. I'm talking about doing the same identical thing we all are doing now, commenting on answers with personal opinions and points of view, without the fear that some random moderator may interrupt a pacific and interesting discussion.

It's not that we have chat, forums and comments and we have to choose between those 3... probably if we think about it we could find a better solution, without going against the site main interests.

Answer 1

One of the best thing is that here you can find real people, sharing your interests and job experience. It's a human site, not a bunch of computer data like you can find on wikis.

Ok, I have two questions now:

1. Have you ever participated in an actual forum? Because, man, those things can be great for sharing interests and job experiences. Someone starts a conversation, others chime in, threads branch off on tangential topics... It's good fun. You might even learn something.

2. What sad, sad wikis have you been hanging around? A good wiki can have all sorts of interesting stuff on it, stuff from humans, even stuff about humans. Indeed, the whole point of a wiki is that humans - multiple persons - can edit them; packing them full of static "computer data" is really missing the point.

Aaaand, one little aside:

In chat you can find 3 people sleeping

Yeah, 'cause the folks who have stuff to chat about are still trying to hammer that square peg into the wrong hole that is the Q&A site, and coming here to gripe about all the splinters.

Patient: Doctor, it hurts when I do this!
Doctor: Well, then don't do that!

Answer 2

The focus of all Stack Exchange sites is the question and the answer, not the interaction between the people. Jeff and co have resisted many attempts to turn the sites into social networks and I agree with this. There are plenty of other places on the internet to chat.

That's one of the reasons why Stack Overflow succeeded and allowed the model to expand to other areas.

Comments that aren't asking for clarification or adding clarification are just noise. Even comments that are adding clarification are ultimately noise when that clarification is edited into the post.

Answer 3

Because forums suck.

By way of answering your question about comments, let me tell you about my own personal experience with forums.

It has to do with trying to find out why my 2005 Ford Taurus wouldn't start when the engine was hot. I spent about an hour sifting through chaff in various forums that I found in a Google search. The closest thing I came up with is the starter relay in the fuse box might be bad (it wasn't).

The following post is typical of such forums. Note that this post actually has better signal to noise ratio than most of the others I found:

http://www.epinions.com/msg/show_~threads/cat_id_~3/id_~8961/forum_id_~124

A summary of the replies in this post:

• It could be an electrical problem.
• I'm having the same problem.
• I'm also having the same problem. Let me know if you fixed it.
• I'm having the same problem. With my Honda Accord (!)
• I am having the exact same problem with my 98 Dodge Avenger.
• Maybe you need a tune-up.
• Check for the connections in the engine. Maybe the problem is there.
• I'm having kinda the same problem, but slightly different...
• Colder weather tends to bring out the worst in an improperly maintained vehicle.
• Find a mechanic.
• Pat's advice is good. Remember, your car is old.
• Anyone knows any information about upgrades for our ignition coils?
• A lame reply to the ignition coils query (having nothing to do with the original question)

And finally,

• an answer (posted by a moderator) stating that the problem might be a bad starter relay in the fuse box. This is the only answer that imparts any useful information.

Under the Stack Exchange rules, every one of these answers except the useful one would have been flagged and deleted by the system, leaving only the useful answer.

The only posts that would be eligible as comments would be those that provided clarification on the original question and on-topic answers.

This is how a Q & A site works. It's deliberately designed to reduce the noise as much as possible.

Answer 4

I think a lot of people come to Stack Exchange sites in the hope of learning a subject or getting a deeper understanding of a subject. Jeff claims that they want people to learn, but what they really desire is to have people that already have learned the subject share their expert knowledge.

In my view, The Stack Exchange model isn't for learning in the broad sense. It is for fact gathering or specific skill building. I am not saying you can't learn from the posts but that is not the intent. The type of learning going on in the Stack Exchange sites is more like either elementary level learning or expert data exchange.

So experts are generally not going to gain a deeper understanding of the subject because of Stack Exchange sites, and individuals will not go from, say, novice to intermediate because of Stack Exchange. (Well, individuals might do these things but it will be in spite of the design and moderation of the subject areas.)

None of what I have said is inherently bad. What is bad is that the fact/skill gathering have been watered down because the moderators have not been strict enough. There is too much noise to use it as a programmers dictionary/encyclopedia.

I believe this has happened because the creators and moderators do actually, in their gut, want people to be able to learn but have no good ideas how to do this with what has developed so far.

The reason is because nobody has real good ideas on how to use the whole hyper text thing to instigate real learning that is also efficient. Real learning is very messy and needs lots of side questions and discussion and off topic comments and tangents. Real learning isn't along a straight path guided by precise Q&A.

Actually I think they are getting closer to a good model. But the owners may simply be happy with what they have and have no desire to make it an actual learning site. Or maybe they understand and want to try it but understand that it would be to hard to implement or take too much trained manpower.

Plus understand the the moderators are going to be developers. I haven't known too many software developers that understand and have the social skills to teach people how to use complex tools like Stack Exchange in a pleasant way. Instead they tend to instruct by just telling people what to do using their authority (often like a hammer). Getting people to use the tools correctly and consistently over time would take teachers. Instructors will work but it will almost always come across heavy handed and a bit rude.

Personally I think they, or somebody else, could implement the social aspect required for true learning using the (often) high quality Q&A focus of Stack Exchange (or other subject sites). One idea is actually tying chat to questions and removing comments so that you can look at a question and, instead of comments, you could optionally view the chat that comes up.