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Is there a reason it takes 50 rep to comment? It seems kind of counter intuitive that I can answer a question but not comment. I have run into several threads where I feel as though I could add something by making a comment. A comment can be made to simply give the OP a suggestion on how to get more specific information in regards to their question. Or simply to help them rule out a possible cause.

Is there any reason the rep is so high for a comment? Is it because of spammers?

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https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/214174/227233 has a pretty direct & detailed answer to that:

  • There are big problems with spam. Automated filters cannot catch all of it.

  • Even among the real comments, most would either say "I have the same problem" or "I agree". Such comments do not add any value, and have to be manually removed.

  • Comments are very painful to moderate. Stack Exchange sites have a process of community moderation (voting, flagging, review queues) that works great for questions and answers, but not so much for comments. Comments cannot be downvoted or closevoted, nor searched (nor do we want that).

  • 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 of its own anyway.

Please do go on to read "What should I do instead?" to get an idea how to get better involved!

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I agree with the OP, and it's a shame I can't add this as a comment to Andrew Lott's answer because the limit is 50 rep on Tor Meta as well!

Comments are also useful to ask a user to refactor her/his question and better specify his needs. Especially on Tor SA where a lot of people which have an interest in using the Tor project have no technical background.

A limit of 50 may make sense on Stack Overflow or Stack Exchanges with a huge amount of activity, but it's way too large for tiny SA's like Tor. I don't know whether this property can be set per site but to me a limit of, say 10 rep would be much more on scale with here.

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  • I'm reticent to mention this, but those with access to moderator tools can actually turn answers into comments. It happens a lot that new users think this is a forum and add a comment as a question, but it's relatively easy for us to catch those flags under Close Votes and convert them to comments when applicable. That said: we absolutely do not suggest adding an answer just so you can get it converted into a comment!
    – Andrew Lott Mod
    Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 22:24
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    You meant adding an answer as a comment, right? Well yes except this is Meta: This site is for discussion about Tor Stack Exchange. So if new users cannot comment and cannot answer because what they have to say doesn't qualify as relevant, how can they interact and participate? The situation is ludicrous.
    – dummydev
    Commented Jun 12, 2016 at 7:14
  • Oops, yes, updated. And whilst I agree with you, Meta isn't the worst place to add comments as answers; that's kind of what Meta is for indeed.
    – Andrew Lott Mod
    Commented Jun 12, 2016 at 15:18

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