Take the situation where somebody asks a simple offshoot question in a comment to an answer. You give a quick answer to the question in a following comment, including an @ attribution. The asker then deletes their comment containing the question.
Is it appropriate to leave your comment with the answer or should you delete it?
I have searched meta and not found this situation referenced.
Thanks,
Ced
If you wrote the answer, try to integrate your reply to the answer.
See Why do I need 50 reputation to comment? What can I do instead?:
- Comments are second class citizens on the Stack Exchange network, not designed to hold information for all eternity. They may get cleaned up at any time. Generally, truly important information should be incorporated into an answer anyway (either by posting a new answer, if the information answers the question at least partially, or by editing an existing answer, if the information is a minor complement or clarification of that answer).
It's not a perfect system because users can in general only clean up (delete) their own comments, and what's left is orphaned replies to those comments.
It's also good to know that (How does comment voting and flagging work?)
No reputation of any kind is earned or lost from comment votes.
So deleting one's "popular comment" should not be an issue if the information can be moved elsewhere.
