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From time to time I check my comments on TeX.SE and delete obsolete one like "Welcome to TeX.SE" or if the content of my comment has been added to an answer or ...

Today I got the message that I'm not allowed to delete more than 5 own comments per day. Does somebody know why?

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Actually i really like the Welcome to TeX.SE all over. They contribute more to the site than what one would suspect (I think). It brings a nice atmosphere to the place. Sometimes I click the Welcome links just for a quick read. So please dont delete those! – zeroth Feb 5 at 6:22

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up vote 14 down vote accepted

It's a protection mechanism to prevent people to delete too much of their contribution on the site. It also hinders an hacker to do the same. Actually your action triggered an automatic moderator attention flag by the system, which I cleared just now.

I guess from time to time some people, mainly from the bigger stackexchange sites, may become frustrated for some reason and start to delete their posts and comments. Later they might regret that. It also hurts the site if some more important comments are gone. So I'm not surprised the SX team put them protection mechanism in place. Normally you don't need to delete too many of your comments in one go. You could also flag some as obsolete, so that a moderator can delete them for you. However, I wouldn't do that because its an extra workload for the moderators.

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As I know I can't flag my own comments. I think it is not necceccary to have obsolete comments on the site and it is nicer to other readers not have to check obsolete comments. I think it is nice to say wellcome to a new user but that this comment can be deleted after two weeks or a month because they are then obsolete. But that is my own opinion and it must not be right for other people ... – Kurt Feb 1 at 22:42
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I'd add that flagging a comment instead of deleting it makes sense when a whole discussion is obsolete, because you can't delete directly the comments by the others, a moderator has to do so. – tohecz Feb 1 at 23:48
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@tohecz: Yes that is what I'm doing. If I found obsolete comments of other users I flag them. If comments of others become obsolete because I deleted my obsolete comment I flag them too. – Kurt Feb 2 at 0:02

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