People do it, and it's not against the rules: but, it has died down asymptotically. Though I did see a couple top comments that hid it surviving for ~4 hours this week.
It usually gets downvoted for banal aspects, but ones I've come to agree are important:
- oftentimes it's a lightly edited copy-and-paste of an attempt to summarize an article.
- even with edits, they're extremely long (this is edited, and its 250 words, about 1 page and 1/2 my browser viewport at 4K)
- usually off-topic because it's too broadly on-topic, i.e. its a summary of the article - ex. here, it isn't germane to the comment it's replying to other than 'if you want more info from them, ask what GPUs' -- it's unlikely the commenter needed the whole article ELI5'd to them in reply to their observation they'd like more info
Sort of "grey goo" for conversation, even with best intentions and editing applied.
It usually gets downvoted for banal aspects, but ones I've come to agree are important:
- oftentimes it's a lightly edited copy-and-paste of an attempt to summarize an article.
- even with edits, they're extremely long (this is edited, and its 250 words, about 1 page and 1/2 my browser viewport at 4K)
- usually off-topic because it's too broadly on-topic, i.e. its a summary of the article - ex. here, it isn't germane to the comment it's replying to other than 'if you want more info from them, ask what GPUs' -- it's unlikely the commenter needed the whole article ELI5'd to them in reply to their observation they'd like more info
Sort of "grey goo" for conversation, even with best intentions and editing applied.