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There are many comments regarding answers (and sometimes questions) which, after being taken into account, become stale.

You forgot a semicolon at line 3 - yahoo1 Mar 25 at 3:50

Thanks, corrected - zeGod5 Mar 25 at 3:53

Does it make sense to hunt and remove such comments and leave only the ones which add some interesting information? If so - how? By flagging them as obsolete?

Note: looking at all the interesting comments and answers I realize that I should have not used the word hunting - I was rather thinking about "actively taking care of, once I see them". I leave the question as it so that some of the comments do not become obsolete :)

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    Don't flag them. The moderators have enough to do as it is. You could delete your own comments, if you desire. Commented Jun 5, 2015 at 11:20
  • @Cerbrus: one of my concerns was exactly this: the extra load on others (in the case of flagging - on the moderators) Commented Jun 5, 2015 at 11:21
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    Personally I would flag them if they're hiding away useful comments or could be misleading if they were taken out of context, but don't go looking for examples to flag for the sake of it. Commented Jun 5, 2015 at 11:23
  • When a long(ish) comment chain has become obsolete, you could use the "other" comment flag and say something like: "All comments past this point were made obsolete by the last edit to the post, purge please". For individual comments, I wouldn't bother. Commented Jun 5, 2015 at 11:27
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    @Cerbrus are you sure? Now and then I flag a comment like this as "Obsolete", because all it does is add noise after the pointed out issue has been fixed. They usually get handled (and the comment removed) pretty soon after flagging. Commented Jun 5, 2015 at 11:49
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    If some are your comments, deleting your half of the (now obsolete) comments might get the other user(s) to also delete theirs. Obviously, this works best for experienced users and while the post is still active. Commented Jun 5, 2015 at 13:27
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    @ryanyuyu: I fear that this will raise the entropy of the comments, with several comments apparently not acted upon, pointing to issues which are not apparent (as they were fixed). The ideal I guess would be the ability for the author of the comment to tag it as a "housekeeping" one, which would give the author of the answer the ability to delete it after cleaning up. Commented Jun 5, 2015 at 13:30
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    @WoJ I've also seen people also ping the other users with something along the lines of deleting my now obsolete comments. Again, this still suffers from the same problem you just described. But it is an alternative to raising a lot of mod flags. Commented Jun 5, 2015 at 13:33
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    You might be interested in this script to create self-destructing comments Commented Jun 5, 2015 at 13:48
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    Note that this feature request on the mother meta would be quite helpful to deal with this sort of thing. Commented Jun 6, 2015 at 5:06
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    My question is why are we concerned with this type of content? The comments help show a history of the question. If one user is deleting theirs and others arent then the chain becomes incomprehensable. I understand that SO runs a tight ship and policy/procedure seems to run things around here, but how far is too far with 'cleanup'. Valid comments are important comments, users can see the edit history so if they want to see the mistake they can do so. Commented Jun 8, 2015 at 1:58

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Yes, this is exactly what the "Obsolete" comment-flag reason is for. A comment that addresses a now-nonexistent concern is obsolete.

As a practical concern, however, you may wish to weigh the value of removal against the work you'll create for a moderator to review the comment. Comments that deserve higher priority for removal include:

  • Obsolete comments that obscure more valuable comments further down the thread.

  • Obsolete comments on questions that might scare away potential answerers. If I see a question with a comment that says "Your question doesn't have enough code to reproduce your problem," then I might navigate away pretty quickly. If the OP fixes the question to include a complete example, that comment should be removed, so future potential answerers are not needlessly scared off.

Meta.SE's How does comment voting and flagging work? explains that three flags will auto-remove a comment (with no upvotes; more are required for upvoted comments). If you believe that a comment can reasonably attract two other flags before a moderator gets around to it, you need not even worry about your flag using up moderator time.

In any case, I probably would not go hunting for obsolete comments; just flag them when you find them.

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    100% agree with 'do not hunt for them; flag them when you find them'. I usually use a 'custom reason' which starts 'Obsolete' and then explains why I think it is obsolete. This is usually (but not always) accepted. Commented Jun 8, 2015 at 5:55
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Responsible authors should remove their comments when the comments are obsolete. Most do.

I don't think hunting for obsolete comments is a good use of one's time.

If you find occasional obsolete comments, you can:

  1. Add a comment to notify the author of the comment that their comment is obsolete. Hopefully they will act upon it. At that time, it's your responsibility to remove your own comment.

  2. Flag the comment as an obsolete comment.

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    #1: Infinite regression FTW! Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 15:25
  • @Deduplicator, that's definitely a danger. Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 16:23

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