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Something I've been seeing a lot lately is that a question or answer will have a problem. Someone will leave a helpful comment telling the person what's wrong. Great!

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The problem arises when two or three more people arrive and say the same thing. Even when done politely, as in the example above, it can make a user feel ganged up on. When not done politely, it quickly becomes toxic.

If this is maybe happening from the review queue, consider checking first to make sure someone hasn't already left a comment. +1 that one.

To be clear, I'm not saying you're an awful person if you've done this. I just think having a single critique rather than a bunch will be a more pleasant experience for a new user and be less likely to scare them away.

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  • Out of curiosity, do the canned comments in the Low Quality queue stack? I.e. if someone 'Reccommends Deletion' with "This does not provide an answer", and I also choose that comment, will it upvote the previous comment instead?
    – Robotnik Mod
    Oct 24, 2013 at 11:22
  • @Robotnik If it's the same comment, the previous one will be upvoted, yes. Not so much if it's different comments :/ Works the same way as close-reason comments.
    – user98085
    Oct 24, 2013 at 11:22
  • @FEichinger Fair enough. Just wasn't sure if it duplicated the same comment or not (and thus was a partial cause of Sterno's question)
    – Robotnik Mod
    Oct 24, 2013 at 11:23
  • Nah, Sterno is purely talking about multiple different comments because everyone picks a different deletion reason. (FWIW, I just delete with no comment needed if someone already posted a canned comment.)
    – user98085
    Oct 24, 2013 at 11:24
  • @Sterno I've edited in the /review item for it, since that should be publicly visible with the link. ... And doesn't display the comments ... Welp, someone will have to edit those in, too, then.
    – user98085
    Oct 24, 2013 at 11:27
  • the auto comment is quite annoying, I just literally did this on accident by deleting a post from the review queue
    – l I
    Oct 24, 2013 at 12:05
  • I'm not clear on exactly how the Review Queue autocomments work. But we're not really getting 3 completely different auto-comments, are we?
    – Sterno
    Oct 24, 2013 at 12:22
  • @Sterno - Two seem canned, fredley's looks like he wrote it himself
    – Robotnik Mod
    Oct 24, 2013 at 12:43
  • @MatthewRead Busted.
    – Sterno
    Oct 24, 2013 at 13:35

1 Answer 1

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2 of those comments (mine and Shadur's) come from the review queue. They stay around after the post has been deleted so the poster can see some feedback. In order for the poster to be able to see, for instance, fredley's comment, they'd need 10k rep, which for the vast majority of users who have their answer deleted isn't the case. Using the review queue auto-comments are important for this reason.

I have even gone so far before as to comment on an answer almost immediately after it was posted (while at the same time flagging it), and then, when it eventually shows up in a review queue, leave an auto-comment as well. I see no way around doing this, unless there is a change to the auto-comment system that would essentially allow an existing comment (in the above case, fredley's comment) to be promoted to the level of the auto-comments, such that when the post is deleted, it remains as the explanation of what the user did wrong.

As for having multiple auto-comments, perhaps I was in the wrong in this case by selecting a new one. However, in my defence, occasionally it's difficult to decide which auto-comment best fits the situation. I disagreed with Shadur, and so decided to use a different one.

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  • I can see your point. Fredley probably saw this from outside the review queue, flagged it, and left his own comment. Shadur did it within the queue. You thought it was the wrong choice (and I agree), and so chose to leave a different auto-comment. So, sadly, in this case maybe there's not much to be done.
    – Sterno
    Oct 24, 2013 at 12:46

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