Is there a better alternative to using low-vote answers for discussion?

Question

It's not uncommon for me to post an answer that ends up being below the highest-voted answer. To some extent, I can assume we all relate.

I've noticed that when I have such a post, high-reputation users tend to use my lower, less-visible answer as a chatroom of sorts. An example occurred on the notorious "What does covfefe exactly mean" question.

Honestly, I have no problem with having my answers host a discussion, even if it's unrelated to my answer. Please don't change your behavior based on this curiosity-based question -- but it's happened to me before as well.

That high-rep users are doing this suggests to me that there ought to be an easier way for users to ping each other for conversational debate. Is this a common practice employed as a work-around for the lack of private-messaging on the site? Or have I just happened to see this on multiple occasions on my own posts?

What is the best way to reach someone for this kind of discussion? Will they hear you if you ping them on the chatroom? Is there a best practice for trying to reach a user for conversation without drawing public attention?

Also, someone recently flagged my attention by tagging me in a similar manner on meta (on someone else's answer, because I had deleted my own). Then I found those comments (including my own) deleted. How does that process work? Who decided to delete those comments and how did it happen?

Thanks.

EDIT: I may not have been clear about my actual question. My ultimate core question is, What is the best way to get in touch with someone for a brief discourse not intended to be permanent? I've seen (mostly high-reputation) users commenting at each other for attention, and then deleting all their own comments shortly thereafter. People have sometimes commented on very old questions I've posted to get my attention, and then deleted those comments (and I followed suit diligently). Is there any clear-cut way to get someone's attention outright, apart from commenting at them on something that might not be related to the discussion at hand?

Answer 1

Extended discussions under any post is discouraged, and the right place for such discussions is the chatroom.

Top voted posts tend to have a lot of viewers and their flagging of comments will ensure that mods purge such comment threads much sooner.

You can ping a user in a chatroom, if they have already been to that room recently, otherwise you may only invite them to it by other ways.

Moderators, however, can ping any user to any chat room any time.

I personally flag all comments as obsolete when I'm done discussing something with someone under some post, and I'd also remove mine myself. Or, I custom flag the post and request a moderator to purge the comment thread.

Update:

To your edits, the answer is "no", there is no clear cut way other than this workaround that we currently do, that is, comment under a user's old post which has no other existing comments. That surely gets their attention, and goes unnoticed by the community, and you can delete those comments later on. Again, comments are not meant for extended discussion.

Answer 2

You would have noted that the whole discussion in question was (more or less) on topic as a debate on whether the OP's question was off-topic or not. Yours being a low-vote answer has nothing to do with it because I have seen the same type of discussion in the comments section under top-voted answers and even under the question itself. Members will discuss a very interesting topic anywhere and anytime, and it is usually a lively and very useful discussion!

Please note this was by no means the sort of discussion where one user would 'ping' another on a chat page and start discussing some topic. In my recent experience here, such discussions develop organically from some highly interesting Q & A and are facilitated by the presence of many (especially senior) members online at the same time. Such discussions do not develop under a particular answer by design, or even for want of a better page, but mainly because it was either that answer or a comment to that answer or a response to a comment that generated the discussion in the furst place. Naturally it would continue there till it is automatically moved to chat by a moderator!

Thus the fact that your answer became an impromptu chat room was solely related to the topic on hand and the responses of certain members. I have known some discussions to continue for quite some time after being moved to chat as well. However, and with due respect to the stated objectives of comments, I think the main question's page is a better place for such discussion than a chat page, as long as the discussion remains on-topic!