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On my answer to the question When referring to races, should 'black' and 'white' be capitalized? (MLA), another user has posted an up-voted (5 at present) comment that contains new information. Another user has suggested that they should write it up as a separate answer but they have not done so to date (9 days later).

Should I incorporate the information from the comment into my answer, giving proper credit to it, or just leave it as it is?

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Yes, you should incorporate information from comments into your answer if you think it will improve the quality of your answer!

Also see (on Meta SE):

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  • Sorry, I'm not good at convincing people there is a subtle racist subtext in a piece of writing. Maybe on some subconscious level you saw it too, though, because you came up with a great solution. – aparente001 Jan 3 '17 at 8:08
  • @aparente001 I'm not really prepared to discuss in comments, because that's not how site policy is made. As a general rule, if you have a position you don't think the community in general agrees with, and you're not prepared to bring up in a meta post if it becomes contentious, it probably isn't something you should be trying to force through on your own. This is a community site. – ff524 Jan 3 '17 at 8:14
  • Can we focus on the positive? I think you found a great solution. – aparente001 Jan 3 '17 at 8:33
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You can incorporate information from comments into your own answer, provided that you make it clear who wrote the comment. In fact, the footer of every page on a Stack Exchange site says:

USER CONTRIBUTIONS LICENSED UNDER CC BY-SA 3.0 WITH ATTRIBUTION REQUIRED

Since comments are user contributions, using them in your answers requires proper attribution according the the rules set out in the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licence.

Note: I included the quote from the footer to point something out that many Stack Exchange users overlook. The intent is not to say this should be attached to every (partially) quoted comment. (Copied from a comment, since comments are ephemeral.)

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  • This seems aggressive -- can't you learn from the comment then write what you learned? Cribbing a few sentences would warrant attribution though? – user18072 Dec 31 '16 at 16:06
  • 1
    @djechlin I included the quote from the footer to point something out that many Stack Exchange users overlook. The intent is not to say this should be attached to every (partially) quoted comment. Does that still seem agressive? If yes, can you explain which specific part of my answer you are referring to? – Tsundoku Dec 31 '16 at 16:12

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