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So, there's this chain of comments in Any example of (roughly) independent variables that are dependent at extreme values?:

A comment chain

After the edits the whole exchange became obsolete, and will only confuse future readers.

So I flagged it and explained in the comment the whole chain was obsolete and had already been addressed.

This is completely in line with SE policy, see for example:

So why was it declined? Or isn't it appropriate anymore?

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    $\begingroup$ Flagging seems reasonable here, but I also see an argument for leaving some of these. I'm not sure they're fully obsolete, IMHO. $\endgroup$
    – gung - Reinstate Monica
    Oct 3, 2016 at 23:55
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    $\begingroup$ Whatever the policy, CV practice is notably more indulgent than that at some other SE sites. Rude or unpleasant comments are quickly excised but many CV people, including at least some of the moderators and some of the high-rep users, are fairly chatty and conversations are often allowed to linger. A positive reason for that is there is often more room for discussion about helpful and unhelpful views of a topic, and not just statements of technically correct answers. Another reason is that a string of comments doesn't do much harm and can just be ignored. $\endgroup$
    – Nick Cox
    Oct 4, 2016 at 8:01
  • $\begingroup$ What does often happen is that anything that looks like an overextended conversation may be moved en masse to chat. $\endgroup$
    – Nick Cox
    Oct 4, 2016 at 8:01
  • $\begingroup$ An interesting example is stats.stackexchange.com/questions/73613/… with 0 upvotes for the question, 8 answers and 70 comments. My own summary is a lack of consensus on whether the OP had a clear and sharp question, but the comments are in no way superfluous and (biased opinion) contain much of the more interesting and thoughtful material. $\endgroup$
    – Nick Cox
    Oct 4, 2016 at 8:18
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    $\begingroup$ FWIW I think it was a combination of @gung's edits and mine that turned the title first from "Any example of (roughly) independent variables but extreme dependent" to "Any example of (roughly) independent variables but extreme that are dependent at extreme values?" to its current one - but "my" edit was simply me amending a suggesting edit by another user (to also add the "correlation" tag). And I'm still not convinced the title is entirely "correct", or in keeping with the actual question text. So discussion about the title still seems pertinent. Albeit comments re the old title may mislead! $\endgroup$
    – Silverfish
    Oct 4, 2016 at 10:55
  • $\begingroup$ @Silverfish I had just looked the last edit, that's why I thought you did the changes haha. So, are the comments in any way related to the current form of the question? I think they are not, and should be deleted, from Aksakal to mine, at least. $\endgroup$
    – Firebug
    Oct 4, 2016 at 11:56
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    $\begingroup$ I think that most of the comments, certainly including Aksakal's, still serve to indicate some of the confusion in the question. The OP wants something that is inherently paradoxical - two variables that are essentially independent, but turn out to be dependent if we restrict to a particular subset (of extreme values). I'm not actually sure whether the current answers quite achieve this, though the OP seems to have been satisfied with them and they do meet some suggested criteria in the Q text. The comment by Batman may be obsolete. Perhaps even Chris Haug's, though I'd venture not. $\endgroup$
    – Silverfish
    Oct 4, 2016 at 12:06
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    $\begingroup$ @AndreSilva I mentioned that post in my question. The question is why the flag was declined in my specific case, not if we should or not flag comments. $\endgroup$
    – Firebug
    Dec 27, 2016 at 13:41

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Aren't we supposed to flag obsolete comments?

Yes, we are; but how the flag will be evaluated is subjective and it depends on many things, one of them is the Stack Exchange community.

For example, here I have flagged 32 comments and have collected 13 declines (which is pretty high ratio; 40%), while in Stack Overflow I have flagged 54 comments with just one rejection). On the other hand, when it comes to flagging posts, I am not so bad on both sites: 39 declines out of 572 (7%) in CV and 21/1285 (2%) in SO.

Deleting comments is a tough action, because it demands time reading the whole context, it is not a priority (except for offensive comments), and there is always the risk someone will complain and demand more time from mods explaining their actions here in Meta, chat, etc. Some mods are more conservative deleting comments than others.

So the best thing to make is to feel how flagging comments goes in the community you are, and take your chances of flagging according with it. I used to flag more comments; now I only do in very obvious cases (this is not a complaint).

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    $\begingroup$ +1. I checked - I have only 17/209 declined comment flags. I flag relatively often (209 flags) but only in what seems like obvious cases: e.g. somebody asking to edit a post for something minor and then a replying comment saying that the post was edited. Such an exchange is usually useless from that point on. $\endgroup$
    – amoeba
    Oct 6, 2016 at 12:57
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    $\begingroup$ This is bad design: there's a flag option for obsolete comments, there are guidelines for it hinted both at meta.SE and at meta.stats.SE. If it's so much burden to delete obsolete comments, then don't give the users the option, nor the guidelines to do it. I'm totally not wasting my time anymore flagging comments. $\endgroup$
    – Firebug
    Oct 6, 2016 at 15:11
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    $\begingroup$ Personally, I flagged 4 comments and got 3 rejected. Never flagged any comment ever after. Seems to be a pointless exercise. $\endgroup$
    – Andy
    Nov 7, 2016 at 19:40

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