I recently made a comment that got a lot of up votes, but I don't seem to have gotten any reputation for it. Is this normal, and if so what's the rationale for this policy?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank You in Advance.
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1 Answer
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No. Votes on comments have no influence whatsoever on your reputation.
The rationale is that comments are meant to be temporary, and even highly upvoted comments may be deleted because their purpose has passed. Answering questions in comments is also fairly discouraged, and so there really shouldn't be any reason for a comment to give reputation.
See the MSO FAQ, and this declined feature request.
answered Oct 28, 2013 at 5:50
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$\begingroup$ What do you mean comments are meant to be temporary? What about comments that just say something like "You might be able to find the answer to your question in this book."? Are they supposed to be posted as answers? $\endgroup$ Oct 28, 2013 at 13:34
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$\begingroup$ By the way, a lot of the arguments in that meta.SO thread you linked to are about how giving reputation would distort the role of comments as a means of discussion. Isn't that also an argument for not allowing voting on comments? $\endgroup$ Oct 28, 2013 at 13:37
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$\begingroup$ @KeshavSrinivasan Re the 1st comment: The main "official" purposes for comments are "to ask for clarification on, suggest corrections to and provide meta-information about posts." Comments of these types may become obsolete, but also highly voted if several users make the same observations. "Information-carrying" comments may also become obsolete (if, for example, they are later fleshed out into a full answer), but those will generally remain undeleted (by the moderators at least) until they have been made obsolete. (And, no, "Maybe Book X has an answer" should not be posted as an answer.) $\endgroup$ Oct 28, 2013 at 14:41
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$\begingroup$ Re the 2nd comment: I agree in part. Note that voting on comments is a somewhat later addition to StackOverflow (introduced some 8 months after launch), and even then there was some backlash. But right now off-topic comments can be deleted without anyone incurring any penalty, and upvoting just increases the visibility of comments. Getting rep involved would really muddy the waters (especially as most of our highest voted comments probably shouldn't remain). $\endgroup$ Oct 28, 2013 at 14:54