Why keep dead link comments?

Question

I recently flagged a few comments that provided a link to what was ostensibly a helpful resource, but had since become dead links linking to nothing in particular. The comments did not provide any information that was helpful without the resource. They were along the lines of (but not identical to):

This reminds me of this cool thing.

I figured since the links were dead the comments were useless, so I flagged them as no longer needed.

However my flags were all declined. I was wondering what the rationale was behind keeping these comments that seem to me to be useless.

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^{Here is one of the comments I flagged for reference.}

Answer 1

I declined that flag. It had been flagged as, "No longer needed." By itself, I didn't see anything wrong with it; it looked like a link to additional information, just like the comments around it. There wasn't anything specific to single that one out.

Now that you've told us the link is dead, I've deleted it. For the most part, we're not going to be checking links unless you tell us to; a no longer needed flag doesn't indicate that a single comment among others has a dead link.

If things need a deeper look, please use the, ”something else” option; that allows you to add additional information and helps us figure out what exactly you're wanting to happen. Especially for comments; our only real options are to keep or delete it. If it's been around awhile, and there's nothing obvious standing out, we'll err on the side of caution and keep it.