I hope I will be forgiven for answering in English this time.
I've observed (in relation to myself and others) that when one is feeling uncomfortable on a SE site, it can be difficult to write a Meta post constructively about the problem. I think you've succeeded, and thanks for bringing it up.
If you would add several example links to your post I think your question would be even more constructive and useful.
I will focus on your Point 3 in this answer, since, as you say, that's the part that's not immediately clear.
3.- El usuario en lugar de contribuir a las respuestas o comentarios los descalificara (dirá que estás mal).
Some background
I've seen a wide gamut across SE sites on how to handle comments. It appears to be up to each SE site community to figure out how it wants to do things, although there is some discussion about best practice at SE Meta, and there is a Help Center article about comments, which states
When should I comment?
You should submit a comment if you want to:
- Request clarification from the author;
- Leave constructive criticism that guides the author in improving the post;
- Add relevant but minor or transient information to a post (e.g. a link to a related question, or an alert to the author that the question has been updated).
When shouldn't I comment?
Comments are not recommended for any of the
following:
Suggesting corrections that don't fundamentally change the meaning of
the post; instead, make or suggest an edit;
Answering a question or providing an alternate solution to an existing
answer; instead, post an actual answer (or edit to expand an existing
one);
Compliments which do not add new information ("+1, great answer!");
instead, up-vote it and pay it forward;
Criticisms which do not add anything constructive ("-1, see previous
comments you scallywag!"); instead, down-vote (and provide or up-vote
a better answer if appropriate);
Secondary discussion or debating a controversial point; please use
chat instead;
Discussion of community behavior or site policies; please use meta
instead.
But these guidelines are interpreted differently depending on the site.
Here are two extreme paradigms I've observed:
Example of heavy comment policing: Interpersonal Skills Beta. From a Meta question:
Comments are for requesting more information and suggesting improvements....
Comments are not for answers; answers are for answers.... You cannot close a question saying it does not belong here and then proceed to answer it in comments. That is the worst of both worlds.... Answering questions in comments only invites others to respond and doesn't actually help curate content that can be properly vetted.
Example of anything nice goes: Academia SE, where some extremly polemical topics come up at times. I will quote a question and two of the pretty upvoted answers it received, which I think reflect accurately the philosphy and practice regarding comment tolerance at Academia. I will add that (1) long discussions of questions and answers sometimes occur at Academia, and typically mods will dump the whole chain into Chat, which usually has a somewhat dampening effect; and (2) I have learned to consistently flag anything flaggable at Academia, and the moderators are 95 - 99% consistent about enforcing the niceness policy.
Now, for the question and the two answers, which were written by participants with respective reputations of 135k, 84k and 138k. The second of the two answers was written by a moderator.
(question) I have noticed a tendency on this site for people to post answers as comments. I don't know why this is, but it happens often, and then the comment gets many "up-votes" as an "answer."
My approach to this has been to ask people to convert their comment into an answer, then once this is done vote it up and flag the original comment for deletion. Here is a recent example (where I haven't flagged for deletion, in support of this question). I'm not happy with that solution, however, because it ends up throwing away the associated comment-votes.
I'd like to understand why people do this, whether others feel it is a problem as well, and if so, is there a better way to handle it?
(answer 1) At least for me, it is (for some reason) psychologically easier to just drop into a question a leave a short comment than to write an answer. If I write an actual answer, I usually try to put down at least ~15 minutes of writing time (I try to not write very short answers), and sometimes I just don't have the time. For comments, 5 seconds are enough.
However, I usually just leave a short comment-as-answer when I think that the answer is obvious enough that somebody else will write the same as an answer anyway. Hence, I usually don't think in these cases that I have some sort of magical special knowledge that isn't available to many other members of this community.
(answer 2) The reason is that one-sentence answers are frowned upon as independent answers on Stack Exchange sites. Therefore people tend to view material that firs into a comment as too short to be a free-standing answer. I don't think there's an easy fix for this, as it's a cultural issue.
Regarding what you wrote, Mike/Erin, about comments that critique or even shred an answer:
When one downvotes an answer, one is invited to leave feedback in a comment. Not doing so can sometimes feel like a slap in the face ("drive-by downvoting"). On the other hand, if the comment comes across as judgmental or dismissive of what I wrote, then I for one would prefer the drive-by approach, frankly. And this leads me to...
My personal opinion
In general, I think that constructive criticism can be good. Notes:
One should titrate the level of criticism one provides, by observing how the participant is taking the criticism. Everybody has their own subjective level of what they are comfortable with, and one should take this into account. For example, what one person might find toxic, another might find annoying.
Debates with repetition are pointless.
Example of a negative style: "In this answer, you fail to ...." I know there are some SE sites where sentences including this word, "fail," are common. I find that style abhorrent.
Example of a style which is not out and out negative, but which doesn't have a friendly tone: "Deberías añadir un poco más."
Examples of a tactful style: "I think this answer could be strengthened by ..."; "made even stronger by"; "Interesting idea. Could you give some supportive reasoning or documentation to strengthen your answer?"
Most regular participants at Spanish Beta, including me, are uncomfortable with what might be considered sloppy writing. I fully accept that this is weird, compared to the rest of the internet. But I think, Mike/Erin, it would be helpful if you made even more use of a spell checker and proofreading of your own. (I do acknowledge the progress you've made in this regard since I wrote a related Meta post, When the line between nice and not nice is fuzzy.)
