@enderland That's a very cool comment, but the OP has less than 50 rep and can't comment yet. So, a mod flag asking a mod to convert the answer to a comment may be appropriate. Even if the OP doesn't see your comment prior to the deletion, they can still see the answer and of course edit it, and they also see a message that the answer was converted to a comment for them.

For brand new people I consider the above scenario a system failure. They want to contribute positively (a comment asking for clarifications is a good enough contribution) but they only have the option of posting the answer (that of course goes against our rules).

Don't know if that's your downvote there (and I don't care) but I've found out that new users (surprisingly) respond better to a 0 scored deletion with a (very) explanatory comment (and sometimes take the time to expand) than having their first ever contribution downvoted.

I never understood why, I always thought downvotes were gentler than deletion...

@YannisRizos I wouldn't call this system failure. As far as I understand, it has been a conscious design decision, a compromise made in order to save community regulars from flood of comments from users incapable of substantial contribution or lacking a patience to wait until their contribution (questions, answers, edit) will prove them valuable...

...Being perfectly comfortable for newcomers has its own cost, and tilting the system in this direction would be a compromise, too - one can only choose what kind compromise to pick. Spirit of this compromise is similar to one expressed in Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand, they purposedly made it tougher for askers, in order to prevent flooding site with low-quality questions

@gnat Sure, I know the reason for the limitation. And I know of a variety of feature requests that (imho) were dealing with the problem in a better way. And they were declined, so I won't even bother mention them.

well now you're talking about real system failure! I mean about the way how feature requests get declined. Have to admit, it feels like SE team just lacks the culture of doing this right. I also recall couple declines in this area and, although as you see I am for keeping status quo, I also recall the decline explanation was... not quite compelling... softly speaking...

It looks like SE guys believe that simply stating the status is enough, what they ignore though is the impact on community morale, making it feel ignored and under-appreciated. Decline done right, should have about the same score (better higher) as the request; ideal decline should also have an accepted mark to indicate that reasong has been presented in a way that satisfied requestor...

...When declining highly popular requests, this means investing a substantial effort; decline post should be passionate, profound and written well enough to address the issue in a way that can be understood (and appreciated) by community. It is fairly sad to see popular requests declined with bland messages like "it's good enough already" / "we don't see this as a problem" - when very popularity points to the fact that underlying issue is important and worth explaining in best terms possible

@gnat I think this is dumb, too, for example I think not being able to direct users to chat to help improve their FIRST question is the most silly thing in the world

@enderland well I don't have strong opinion on that. I think you may be wrong about that - but (and this is a big big BUT) if I ever see request for this declined, I would really want to see strong justification for that. Not some mumbling ohwedontfeellikedoingitwouldbeagoodidea

@gnat it makes sense for a site like stack overflow where there is a huge user base already

for a new or beta site? it prevents people who MIGHT be great contributes from starting out

@enderland for smaller site, I see. Yeah for beta that for sure sounds like a good idea

Maybe I'll post that as a feature request

and it's not just one or two people, it's a good handful

@enderland that could make sense. Just make sure of strongly focusing your request beforehand. Limited to beta would be a pretty strong defense against decline / dupe-close. Widening for smaller graduated sites sounds tempting, but involves certain risk

@gnat people are all going to read it as "omg we're going to get 9000 people on chat for stack overflow after their bad questions get closed every day" if it's not limited to beta

@enderland yeah. Also, iirc there is similar "wider" request - you better find it, point to it in your, and clearly (very clearly) explain the difference

idk though, it's hard to motivate myself to put that work together with the liklihood of it being accepted being approximately 0