16
OK, since no one else is offering an opinion:
Yes, comments on a question that reveal or spoil the solution should be removed.
If you want to answer the question, you can do so in an answer. Comments shouldn't be used for that purpose.
Comments on a question often contain clarifications or hints, and although those should always be edited into the question ...
13
All "coded comments" that you refer to are rot13ed. All of them. There are no other codes used; that would be pointless since the comments would then be difficult to decode. The point of rot13ing comments is not encryption; it's unreadability on first glance.
That being said, I think that rot13ing isn't ideal, but in some cases it can be necessary to ...
13
Common courtesy when you can't spoiler things easily is to use rot13, a cipher that shifts every letter forward 13 places: A and N switch, B and O switch, C and P switch... all the way up to M and Z.
Here is a site that will automatically encode or decode for you.
11
Pros:
Prevents accidental spoilers to people scrolling past comments
Cons:
Not intuitive (as seen by this meta post)
More time/effort required to read comments
More time/effort required to post comments
Whilst I'm generally in favour of spoiler tags in posts, I'm not a fan of rot13 spoiler comments. To me the cons above far outweigh the pro. To the ...
7
I can't speak for the person who declined these flags, but I don't think I would have been particularly inclined to delete most of them either. A comment of
"+1 good job"
or
"Thanks!"
conveys nothing that a simple upvote or Accept wouldn't have already conveyed, but most of the comments you flagged do more than this - they express the ...
7
In order to promote an environment of expertise, we need feedback answers. First, this includes those members of our community that dislike the "puzzle challenge" format and are upset that it seems that's all we do. In any community, it's important to include minority opinions. Second, other formats have problems. Lengthy critiques make comments a mess and ...
6
As per meta.SE:
Comments are temporary "Post-It" notes left on a question or answer. You should not expect them to be around forever:
Due to this transient nature of comments, and due to the fact that purging all comments on a post is far easier than deleting comments selectively, moderators will often opt to simply use the "purge all comments" button.
...
6
I really appreciated the feedback on the example question. To me that was more useful than the actual answer to the puzzle - since I already knew that! :)
I'd be very glad to have feedback as either a comment or an additional answer - please add the implicit question "what do you think of this puzzle and what should I change?" to all of my questions, thus ...
6
I think that if the OP intentionally drops some information in the comments or in a chat, he/she should edit the question and add it there too (or allow somebody else to do). Otherwise it would be unfair. People are not expected to be reading a lot of comments and chat messages to find clues (except if the question explicitly states that they should, but ...
5
Would it bring value to us, probably.
Would it bring value to enough other Stacks to make it worth giving priority, maybe but probably not.
Would it happen, doubtful - the list of feature requests to the developers is quite long, and in all honesty there are dozens of things that by rights should come long before something like this.
If someone has said ...
5
There is no hard-and-fast rule about this, but people generally try to keep spoilers out of the comments, especially on a question (on an answer, I think it's fair to assume that if you're reading the comments, you've also read the answer).
The two strategies that are employed are either to comment vaguely enough that your comment can only be understood by ...
4
It seems that this particular situation has bothered you somewhat. If I understand it, you want to explain your side (including your reason for the accepted answer) clearly.
You can do this in comments or edit it in the text. I have seen both on this site. Of course if you chose to edit it in the text you will have to give the context and reasoning.
I, ...
4
In general I'm strongly against moderators deleting comments unless they're actually offensive or spam. And there's a big grey area here: attempted-solution comments vary hugely, from wild guesses through partial answers to full solutions. That said, here are a couple of possible solutions to the problem you raise.
Is it possible for mods to convert ...
4
I just thought of another point, important enough to deserve an answer to itself.
Solving puzzles is often a joint effort. Often one person comes up with an idea which is helpful to answer the question but isn't an answer on its own, and then somebody else follows up on that idea and expands it into more of an answer. That first person would often be better ...
2
I both use ROT13 in my own comments AND find myself agreeing with you. It does make the comments section look a bit of a mess and could be off-putting to first-time visitors to the site.
I suppose we have to ask ourselves why people use it. They want to hide potential spoilers.
Puzzling is unique on SE in that people reading the questions don't usually ...
2
Questions about puzzle creation are on topic, so how about asking your own question about the question in question? Then you can add your critiques as an answer. This carries all the normalization advantages you mentioned, while avoiding the spoilers which would occur when discussing the answer within the challenge itself.
One important caveat: make sure ...
1
I think this site should have a policy of not using rot13 in comments, or similar methods of obfuscation. In fact it already does, it's just not really enforced.
There are two kinds of comments -- comments on questions, and comments on answers -- which I will cover in turn, since the reasoning for each of them is different.
Comments on questions
Many Stack ...
1
As the one who made the answer, I can agree that this is an issue. Unfortunately, I don't have a perfect solution to this, but I can offer my thoughts and suggestions.
I was a bit confused as to all the ROT-13 comments since I did make it a Community Wiki so anyone could have updated the answer. As such, I can think of a few potential reasons for this ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible