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Possible Duplicate:
What to do with questions that are answered with no answers?

(This is not a duplicate of What to do with questions that are answered with no answers? which is from the owner's perspective)

On the Super User Unanswered Tab, I get to see

which features two questions that are actually answered:

From my expierence, very often these comments dont' get followed up.

As you can see in the screenshot, one dates from 2 months ago and the other of several months.

This means that, the longest button in the header, doesn't work properly

What can we do about this? It would be way more handy to see questions where I can answer/upvote.

But now, most of the questions are the same one as yesterday, the day before, and so on...

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  • possible duplicate of What to do with questions that are answered with no answers? and Unanswered question answered in comments and Answering comment-answered questions
    – jscs
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 19:14
  • Related: How to give credit for an answer in the comments
    – jscs
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 19:16
  • @Josh: Do you read questions before suggesting them as a duplicate; the first one you linked is from the owner's perspective and the second one doesn't outline this problem. They are not duplicates. As for the related question, it talks about an already given answer which is missing in the case of this problem. Your last suggestion comes close but does not resolve the problem and does not outline the problem as well as this question here does.
    – Tamara Wijsman
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 19:18
  • The correct action is no different if you are the question owner or a passerby. Ping the user who made the comment to post it as an answer; if there's no response, post the answer yourself, probably marking it as CW. This is covered in the questions that I linked to, among others.
    – jscs
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 19:19
  • Ha! I feel the cool rush of a meta-breeze. However, digitxp's answer already includes that suggestion.
    – jscs
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 19:22
  • @JoshCaswell: Oh, I've misread that sentence slightly. Thought about flagging the question for CW. Thanks...
    – Tamara Wijsman
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 19:23

1 Answer 1

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If this is just people answering in comments instead of answers, it would be a good idea to ask them to formalize their answer so that it can help more people.

Or if they don't, put it in an answer yourself. Probably a good idea to mark such an answer community wiki since they're not really your upvotes.

Update: As has been noted in the comments, another possibility is a Move to Answer moderator flag and associated utility. This would solve the problem of the perception that you are "stealing rep".

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  • Won't putting in an answer that's listed in the comments get me down voted? That does not resolve this problem, which requires up votes. Asking doesn't help as they don't follow it up. Does community wiki make it disappear? Although these questions aren't really community wiki worthy...
    – Tamara Wijsman
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 18:55
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    @Tom I would trust the community to upvote based on the quality of the answer and know what you were trying to do with your answer.
    – digitxp
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 18:59
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    But does everybody see it that way? I doubt so. It could be seen as gaining reputation by stealing those comment answers. Your idea isn't necessarily bad, but I don't see how it would work in a way that it works on every question of this type. Then I need someone to actually pass by and consider to vote me up rather than throwing in a down vote or doing nothing (because he doesn't want to spent reputation on down voting).
    – Tamara Wijsman
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 19:03
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    One alternative I can think of is a Flag to Move to Answer option.
    – digitxp
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 19:06
  • 2
    @digitxp: I just checked, and as far as I can tell, there isn't an option for a moderator to move a comment to an answer. Of course, this could be changed, but...
    – PearsonArtPhoto
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 19:11
  • I like it, can you edit it in your answer so it stands out? Or should I put up a separate feature request?
    – Tamara Wijsman
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 19:12
  • @pearsonart: A comment can be seen as a bad quality answer, I guess that's why it doesn't exist. But well, a bad quality answer is in these cases better than no answer at all. And a good quality answer is not possible given that such simple answer already solves the problem. Usually this would be the result of bad quality questions, but I don't see any problem with the two examples I gave...
    – Tamara Wijsman
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 19:15
  • @Tom: There is nothing wrong with stealing other peoples answers as long as you're making things better. In fact, Joel explicitly encourages it.
    – hammar
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 19:15
  • Good summary! 1. Ask them 2. Put a CW answer 3. Request flag if it doesn't work.
    – Tamara Wijsman
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 19:24
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    Conversion of comments to answers by mods has been discussed (two further links in the first comment here) in the past and been rejected. /cc @Tom
    – jscs
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 19:26
  • Here's an example of Jeff "stealing" an answer from a comment (and as the commenter I was amused and honoured to be "stolen" from) meta.stackexchange.com/questions/69103/…
    – Kate Gregory
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 20:29
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    +1 for put it in an answer yourself, that is the answer to this problem.
    – Lance Roberts
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 22:34

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