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I have flagged some comments as too chatty. But they are declined. Examples of comments I have flagged: "@xyz Cheers mate :)" or "You are welcome @xyz" etc.

Normally in other Stack Exchange sites, such comments are removed when we flag it because it doesn't add anything valuable. But I feel the rules are different on Sports.SE. Such comments are acceptable.

Can we know specific rules about when to flag comments as "too chatty" or "not constructive"?

  • As a note: From 2017 Too chatty and other comment flags have been replaced by the single flag No longer needed. – Chenmunka Jul 28 '17 at 7:44
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First, don't worry too much about being declined. Comments are ephemeral; comment flags doubly so. There's no penalty for a declined flag.

Second, I would agree with your assessment of those comments. However, since this is a non-technical site, I don't think enforcing the letter of the rules as strictly as possible is always the best policy. With our core of active members being so small, I would err on the side of inclusiveness so as not to accidentally drive away a potential contributor. Once a comment like that is more than a couple of days old, though, I'd go ahead and remove it. (In fact, on your most recent flag, I'd actually delete several other comments as well - comments about edits become noise very quickly.)

Note that this policy cannot scale to larger sites.

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Attaching the thread in reference: https://sports.stackexchange.com/a/3333

You are correct in flagging. As a result of this meta question, the mitigation plan will be to remove these "too chatty" and "not constructive" comments approximately a week after they are made.

Here is my ongoing concern: Sports SE and its community has been recently described as negative (Jon Ericson: "I'm curious why the on-topic page seems so... negative.") and stubborn. Whether justified or not, this has been brought up as an issue.

The user in the thread is: 1) a new Sports SE user and 2) appreciative of the answer he was given. Who are we to alienate our users for saying "thank you," especially if he was adequately helped out? If it becomes excessive, then we can direct the user to our commenting privileges and/or our chatroom.

I much rather encourage "good sportsmanship" than to immediately shoot it down. Given the criticisms Sports SE have received, isn't flagging such comments contradictory to welcoming our users? Again, flagging is the way to go and such comments will be eliminated in approximately a week.

  • FGITW'd on a per-site meta. I'm really losing my touch. – Michael Myers♦ Oct 10 '13 at 15:36
  • By about 45 seconds...but it would have been much different if I weren't distracted by something called work [please flag for chattiness]. – user527 Oct 10 '13 at 15:38
  • Fair enough. Thanks. – hims056 Oct 11 '13 at 4:16
  • 1
    Comments have been deleted. – user527 Oct 14 '13 at 13:11
  • Is this considered chatty: sports.stackexchange.com/q/3444/1455 – Jacob Jan Tuinstra Oct 29 '13 at 21:24
  • @JacobJanTuinstra Dealt with. – user527 Oct 30 '13 at 1:51

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