<p>As the user whose comments you take offense at, I would like to offer a word of explanation. (Incidentally, I would have appreciated a pointer to this Meta question, e.g., in a reply to one of my comments. Complaining about me behind my back is not good style.)</p>
<p>I agree that I will often post comments under questions about imbalanced data and over-/undersampling, even if the questions themselves are not about <em>whether</em> this is a good idea, but about <em>how</em> to go about over-/undersampling (or similar). True. My reasoning is that over-/undersampling is, in my opinion, akin to shooting yourself in the foot. When someone asks for the best way to shoot yourself in the foot (use a shotgun? a crossbow?), I'll post a comment pointing out that the foot-shooting <em>itself</em> may be misguided.</p>
<p>I personally think that these comments add value. And note that I am posting them as <em>comments</em>, not as <em>answers</em> - which they are not, as you point out.</p>
<p>Now, you could make a point that if I did post these as answers, they could at least be downvoted if enough users felt the way you do. True again. I think reasonable people can disagree about whether my comments should really be answers. But judging from the upvotes my comments sometimes get, I suspect that any such answers would also garner their share of upvotes - and getting rep out of these non-answers-only-posted-as-answers-so-people-can-downvote-them feels at least as spammy to me as posting comments.</p>
<p>Funnily enough, I posted a Meta question about this precise issue here: <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5000/1352">What to do about &quot;wrong&quot; questions?</a> The top voted answer there was indeed to post an answer.</p>
<p>You also complain that I use boilerplate comments. Again, I plead guilty as charged. Why am I doing it? Because we get one or more of these questions every single day. Every one a slightly different question about shooting yourself in the foot. One day it's shotguns vs. crossbows. The next day it's about right foot or left foot first. Then whether it might not be best to start by shooting yourself in the calf first. I still believe that a boilerplate answer &quot;don't shoot yourself in the foot at all&quot; is useful, even if the question is one about shooting yourself in the hand or in other body parts. After all, the alternative would be to either spend a lot of time crafting tailored answers to each separate question, which I honestly don't have the time or inclination to do, or not to do anything. Call me obsessive, but I believe that if my comments make someone think twice about unbalanced data and over-/undersampling, then they are useful, and not posting anything because I didn't have the time to do a thorough job but did not want to post boilerplate would have been a loss.</p>
<p>Also, note that we have a very useful Meta question here: <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2468/1352">How best to use the review queue?</a> It contains a lot of boilerplate you can use for comments, and which I also use often, especially for what I think are self-study questions. Yes, boilerplate has its place.</p>
<p>Incidentally, it is not the case that I post my boilerplate &quot;without even considering the question at hand&quot;, as <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6245/answering-a-question-other-than-the-one-that-is-asked#comment21062_6246">you allege</a>. Per above, my comments may not address the specific foot-shooting question, but also per above, I believe it's <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5326/1352">better to have a short imprecise comment than nothing at all</a>.</p>
<p>Finally, you note that my position is a minority one, and that lots of people are thinking deeply about the imbalance &quot;problem&quot; (you will excuse the scare quotes), SMOTE etc, even in peer reviewed articles. Yes, that is true. <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6245/answering-a-question-other-than-the-one-that-is-asked#comment21058_6245">With Nick Cox</a>, I have little faith in the statistics published in peer reviewed journals and conferences, especially in papers from non-statisticians. Among whom I count ML scientists, who are typically far more competent in computer science, algorithm design, database operations, software development and straight-up coding than in statistics. I started my statistical &quot;career&quot; in psychology, and the statistical half-knowledge that is published in psychology journals is breathtaking - because authors, reviewers and editors are psychologists, not statisticians, and they frankly are misremembering half of what they learned in their one undergrad stats course. Thus, the fact that there are peer-reviewed articles on foot-shooting does not carry much weight with me. Sorry to be blunt.</p>
<p>Conversely, yes, I know that I am one of the more vocal people here when it comes to the topic under question, but I am certainly not the only one to weigh in here. It is also not the case that the only arguments I give are posts I wrote myself. Yes, I do link to my own posts in my comments - because (a) I know them best, and (b) I wrote <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/357466/1352">one of them</a> for the express purpose of having a canonical question to link to (and invested quite some time and effort in it), after noticing this deluge of &quot;class imbalance problem&quot; questions. I assume you have seen the comments below this question of mine, which to me indicate my mystification is shared by some.</p>
<p>Believe me, I would be the first to rejoice if this particular stream of &quot;wrong questions&quot; were to stop, and we could go back to answering interesting questions. Unfortunately, it doesn't.</p>
<p>If the moderators believe that my commenting is not welcoming to new users, and that I should cut back on it, then I will certainly do so. If so, I ask them to contact me. Until then, I will probably continue commenting, because I actually think it's the right thing to do.</p>
<p>Let me close by thanking you for bringing the fact that my commenting is off-putting to some to my attention. The feedback is appreciated, and I will try to moderate my behavior. Conversely, I would like to ask you to consider my points in good faith.</p>
