Recently, I have noticed a question "answering" technique in which an answerer simply rephrases an existing comment.

For instance, I recently posted a question (no link, as there is no reason to have one). I got a perfect answer - in a comment. I don't know why - perhaps it was short and not terribly fancy, but it gave me everything I needed. I responded by saying that it was really helpful, and if they posted it as an answer, I would be happy to mark as accepted. Shortly after that, an evidently unrelated user (vastly different rep/profile) posted an answer - using the SAME exact code. Now that I know more about the code, I learned more about it, and there are many ways to do it, and yet the same code was used.

In fairness, it COULD be a coincidence. But, even if the above example is chance, I notice it all the time. An answer in a comment is hastily rephrased/posted by another user.

What should be done about these answers? I thought about downvoting, but they ARE, technically, correct, helpful answers. What is the proper thing to do?

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This happened to me today. What did I do? I upvoted the answer. After all, I think it's correct. –  Josh Caswell Aug 26 '14 at 23:25
    
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I post comments that answer (usually trivial) questions. Sometimes someone copies it into an answer. I never care. –  Gus Aug 26 '14 at 23:31
    
Today someone had the nerve to poach my "answer" by editing his poor answer that he had posted first and stole my rep, getting +2 and I have got nothing. –  CashCow Sep 8 '14 at 13:50

2 Answers 2

up vote 20 down vote accepted

Users who post answers in comments do so for a number of reasons:

  1. They don't want to bother to flesh out a complete answer.
  2. See #1.

Unfortunately, comments are not the best place to post answers. When I poach a comment like this, I'll typically mark my answer Community Wiki, since it's not my work.

Of course, if the comment is only a small part of a larger, complete answer, the poster deserves full credit for their contribution.

Citing comments? Meh. That's angels dancing on the head of a pin. If a person wants credit for their work, they should post it as an answer, where it belongs.

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There is an imho valid reason to "only" post a comment, in which case converting to an answer is not good: If the question should be closed and later deleted (common for typo/no-repro, sometimes also others). Also, if a good duplicate was proposed, and the question may be nearly closed (adding a different good answer to the master would be good though). –  Deduplicator Aug 27 '14 at 13:19
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Also, people may only post a comment if they're not 100% sure it's the correct answer. For example, they didn't want to bother testing it, and just gave an educated guess at what it might be. Then the OP would reply "thanks that worked".. and then someone else could come along and post it as an answer. –  Dronehinge Oct 29 '14 at 8:23

Comment require less effort/time... I'm not Jon Skeet who can write high quality half page answer in time it takes me to have one line comment.

One option to deal with it is to post answer to your own question based on the comment if comment's author have no time/intention to post as answer. Consider to post as Community Wiki as Robert Harvey suggests, but see what effort you put in creating good answer from comment.

I personally would be happy with such behavior and I'll come and upvote/comment/edit. If I really feel writing good answer - I can still do it later.

If someone converts answer into low quality answer - just vote appropriately - but vote on quality of answer alone.

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