Cynthia, this rule has been in existance for years, and many other forums have a similar rule. The comments you mentioned where assisting to add more suggestions for solving the question, not adding their own
Also, far from being counter-productive, the rule there to try and help members get answers - old post like this 1 (this particular 1 is 7 years old), seldom get revisited by members looking to answer questions, it just so happened that this thread got a few additional answers, but that is the exception rather than the norm.
Look at it this way, even if this was a brand new post, and, say, 3 other members started posting their own (related) questions on here, you can imagine for yourself how chaotic the thread could become...various members posting answers to different questions, all on the same thread...and this would become even worse if the question was a complex one

To this end, we try to keep things as simple as we can - 1 thread poster, 1 thread
I hope this makes more sense to you now?
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