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I recently flagged this answer as "not an answer" because it no longer is one - it had been an incorrect answer at first, but was edited effectively out of existence by the user who posted it "to preserve the comment discussion":

(This answer was wrong... so I've edited it out... I'm leaving this here to preserve the comment discussion)

Was I wrong to flag the answer? I haven't seen that justification for leaving a stub instead of simply deleting before [I haven't been active on SO for long], but I can kind of see the user's point, as the comments may be helpful to somebody.

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    Correct flag IMHO. He could have perhaps created an answer based on the valuable comments. But now it's simply not an answer.
    – Bart
    Nov 13, 2012 at 11:58
  • Depends. If the answer was utterly wrong and misleading then it should be deleted. "preserving comment discussion" is not reason enough to keep it. If the answer was just "wrong" but not seriously misleading I would prefer to keep it as-is maybe adding explanation why it's wrong as an edit.. Nov 13, 2012 at 12:02
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    It was actually deleted, but the OP decided to undelete.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Nov 13, 2012 at 12:06
  • I took the liberty to roll it back...because either it's a wrong answer, are edited into a good answer...or deleted. Nov 13, 2012 at 12:42
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    Hmm ... the answer is "utterly wrong and misleading", and can't realistically be edited into a good answer without replacing it entirely (which would just create a dupe of a correct, accepted answer). I'm reluctant to add an edit that just says "This is wrong: see the comments" as the user has already acknowledged that the answer is wrong and made an attempt to address that, so to do so would seem hostile. Can't some all-powerful being here just nuke it?
    – user201929
    Nov 13, 2012 at 13:07

1 Answer 1

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If the comments provide an answer, please edit them into the body of the post to make it an actual answer. If they don't, the answer can be deleted.

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  • This reminds me: I have some answers where I left the content in but added a note stating that the answer is wrong and to refer to the comments. I don't have links to them handy right now, but I wonder if I should do anything more with them. Nov 13, 2012 at 12:19
  • @BoltClock'saUnicorn I'd probably fix them up if I ran across them. Nov 13, 2012 at 13:35

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