what's the point in unformatted comments?

Question

I know that I can answer and I initiate the answer starting from clarifications immediately getting negative ratings which discourages to further participate in this thread.

What's the point in this?

1) Users with less that 50 cannot comment. And this is the case with me during with more than 75% of my answers.

I am answering and always getting negative ratings (note that many of my answers showing 0 while they were really initially downvoted and then upvoted) and not because of the helpfulness but just because others become irritated by putting content in answer instead of comments (which were just not available most of time for me)

2) Comments do not permit any formatting and simply are not readable for updating. Why cannot I centralize all my replies just in obe answer. Why does it irritate all other participants?

Are you comfortable clicking buttons to open hidden comments and reading unformatted strings?

3) Sometimes I answer to clarify my understanding getting negative ratings. I am answering in order to understand better. What is wrong with this?

---- Related questions:

• How do I search my comments in SF?
• how to order my posts by time?

Answer 1

The Server Fault site is part of a project named Stack Exchange. Stack Overflow was the first site implemented using SE. The SO site was also the first to have a related meta site for discussion about SE/SO itself. The MSO site is where you will find answers to any "what, why, how" questions regarding the behavior of SE-powered sites -- in particular, the "Official" FAQ. The "rules" of the SE sites were not arbitrarily chosen in private. MSO's discussion history chronicles the development of these rules as well as the Community's reaction to them.

1. Reputation requirements for commenting is an implicit design choice of SE. You can find discussion of this on MSO. For starters, right from the FAQ. Additional searches will reveal other related discussion.
2. Actually, comments do support formatting. Yes, a limited sub-set of "regular" formatting, but formatting nevertheless. Comment formatting was discussed on MSO, and although not a popular question, it succinctly captures the purpose of comments vs support for full-formatting.
3. An answer is intended to be an answer and comments are intended to be comments. Discussion at MSO has repeatedly clarified this.

But to address your first question:

I know that I can answer and I initiate the answer starting from clarifications immediately getting negative ratings which discourages to further participate in this thread.

What's the point in this?

The point is that all the SE sites are Community-driven. What is considered acceptable content and behavior is decided by the same Community that uses and contributes to the site. Insistent and intentional deviation from the Community's expectations will result in down-votes. As with any Community, some may grow tired of what they perceive as undesirable behavior.

I would highly recommend dedicating time to exploring the MSO site to understand not only the functionality of the SE software, but also the expectation of participants within the SE Communities.

Answer 2

A follow-on to jscott, but some threads from MSO that discuss this point:

• 50 reputation for making comments is too high
• Lower the amount of reputation needed to comment
• Is the ability of low-rep users to comment within their own questions adequately documented?

As your your question about comment-formatting, that isn't well documented, but you can format comments:

• How to use formatting in comments?
• Text formatting now allowed in comments (List of proven and disproven abilities)