Is there a canonical reason why I can't flag my own comment?

Question

I've been involved in a comment thread (with babou, not that it makes any difference) that has no reason for existence after both of us have run out of things to say. While it existed it was useful (and it wasn't extended enough to be worth moving to chat), but tomorrow it will just clutter up the site. What I wanted to do was to flag the thread for removal, but I thought it would be impolite to flag a comment that wasn't mine. Surely the mods might appreciate a heads-up on our thread, since I can't imagine that their responsibility extends to reading every comment on this site.

So, is there a reason behind the policy that you can't flag your own comments? On a more abstract level, is this question worth anything beyond a (tempest-in-a-teapot) tag?

Answer 1

You can always delete your own comments outright and flag the others as "obsolete".

The idea is probably that you should not create work for others when you can do the deed yourself.

Related:

• Allow flagging a comment after upvoting it
• Allow flagging own comments
  Allow me to flag my own comments as obsolete

Answer 2

Moderators get only two buttons on comment flags: “delete” and “dismiss”; the latter makes the flag go away and marks it as declined in the flagger's history. Therefore, if you're requesting anything other than “delete this comment”, it's better if you do it through a post flag, rather than a comment flag.

If you think a short comment conversation is obsolete, delete your half and flag the other half. If you think a long comment conversation is obsolete, flag the post. Moderators have a button to delete all the comments on a post.