I noticed that sometimes the correct answer is inside a comment, and the asker have to answer him/herself quoting the comment.   How about make it possible to accept a comment? Of course the time that must elapse before you can accept a comment should be much greater than answers.
47417
Question: What if the author of a question can accept a comment?   The problem:  Time and time again, answers are posted as a comment.  Usually, the person who commented has the best of intention (e.g. it was a trivial answer [to the answerer], and they weren't sure if the OP would immediately edit the question after the comment).  But this leaves the frustrating situation of an unanswered question with a perfectly good answer.  This problem accumulates over the years.     Candidate solution:  The OP can just "accept" the comment, after which a duplicate of the comment is made an accepted CW answer, with a preface indicating that it was originally a comment, e.g. This answer was originally a comment posted by [[blah]] that has been accepted by the author of the question.   Comments on this scheme:   The author of the comment has indicated they're not interested in gaining/losing reputation through their comment (thus CW answer). The original comment is still there. If desirable, the "author" of the accepted question could be a "bot", so the answer is not attributed to a genuine account.  (I suppose it would already be technically possible for Joe Blow to create a script for a bot that creates an answer from a comment in the proposed way.)     A similar question was asked before  (over 3 years ago), and in numerous other questions which have been deemed "duplicates" (,  and ; see also ), so there seems to be demand for such a feature.  The answers to these questions seem (to me, at least) quite weak:   "ask the commenter to add the comment as an answer"   The OP already did this by asking the question in the first place.  And what if the author of the comment doesn't respond (or takes a long time to respond)?  This also adds more chit-chat irrelevant to the question.   "add an answer of your own, referring to the comment, and accept it."   A hacky workaround.  How could this possibly be better than accepting a comment?  (Yet, this is the most up-voted response.)  Moreover, this adds to the user's list of "answers" (thus making the user's page harder to look through).   "When i leave a comment, i do so because i want to leave a comment."   Great; now what about everyone else?  In the immortal words of the FAQ: "Other people can edit my posts?!"  And it's not even an edit, it's copying the post from one box to another (a more hacky version of which is regarded as the "accepted" method).
72961
can you tell me how can I put questions and get more answers ! what I should do to get more interaction with my posts ! waiting for hours and days maybe months to get an answer or comment is not good ... Really I want some advices , thanks in advance
17245
Sometimes I can best remember a question by its comments. How can I search for a question that way?  Downloading the data dump is not viable because it may be a question posted today.
12032
For the second time (IIRC) since I have joined SO, I have found the answer on my own, immediately (within minutes) after posting the question. I answered my own question the first time, but seeing that there are some "scandals" where people ask and answer, just to get reputation, I am not so sure anymore. Sure I can select my own answer after 2 days, but I am confused.
18067
I came across  and at the time there were no suggested answers. After reading Mark Hubbart's comment (at the time with four upvotes), which was the correct answer, and seeing that it had been over 30 minutes since his comment, I figured I would provide that answer in my own words, which I did. My answer is longer, and I think more rounded and more useful, but the core of the answer came from the comment. I have no idea if I'd have thought up the answer on my own--a definite maybe to that.  Now had I tried to be "honorable" or something, such as instead of answering, suggesting to the commenter that he make his comment an answer, I would only have accomplished giving away easy rep to some other user not as into gratuitous self-denial.  The commenter had merely to enter his comment into an answer box instead of a comment box! It was his choice! Whether he was too lazy or didn't think his answer worthwhile or some other reason is not my responsibility. Must I bend over backward to help him earn points that he so carelessly left lying around for another person to take? It just took a tiny bit of non-laziness on my part to get my text typed into the box that would reward me instead of the box that wouldn't.  If my perspective is incorrect and the community would rather see such answers-as-comments rewarded and supported, I will gladly accept that. In the meantime, I just want to shake off the tiny bit of guilt my overly-nice and overly-concerned-with-propriety self is feeling. :)
107265
I've just been presented with a suggested edit to an  - but the edit was proposed by the OP himself, in which he clarified that the answer was right, but with a few tweaks/revisions which he wanted to communicate to viewers. He didn't amend the answer, but appended clearly-labelled comment and code.  I hovered over the accept button, but wanted to check and couldn't find any specific guidance.  In the meantime, ironically, the suggested edit has been rejected by another user...  Is there any accepted guidance for OP comments in an accepted answer? Or is it purely down to judgement?   In my opinion, what was being proposed as an edit was valuable, but I questioned whether it was the right place for such an edit.
24978
This one leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth, but I defer to others as to whether it is appropriate or not. In , I wrote an answer to a question based on my experiences; it was upvoted and accepted, woo.  Now, today, in response to a different &#8212; but related &#8212; , someone has pasted my answer nearly verbatim (awkward English intact, I may add) as an answer.  Is that really okay? Is it a behavior that should be encouraged? Discouraged?
118837
I have an answer that I'm certain is technically correct. However, it continues to be downvoted. The answer has already been noted in comments on other answers to be better. It goes more in-depth than the others, yet it continues to be downvoted.  The already upvoted answers were nowhere close initially, and I had already commented on them to say why it is wrong...  Isn't there a limit for that? Shouldn't something be catching this?
112753
Recently, I was told:  Welcome to Stack Overflow. You'll get the privilege to add comments when you get 50 reputation points. Until then, don't post comments as answers.  That &quot;answer&quot; got converted into a comment (by the responder or some automated process).  I wanted to make a simple comment in the first place anyway. Since comments are often less obtrusive than answers (and can sometimes be much more pertinent, like when pointing out errors in code or grammar or orthograph), why are new users allowed to answer but not to comment?  What is the reasoning behind this bizarre restriction?
112880
What this question is about:  It occurred to me that even experienced users occasionally forget that they either:    received viable answers to existing questions or  need to edit existing questions to get more appropriate answers.   What this question is not about:   I'm not suggesting that we badger "or otherwise nudge" users into accepting answers to their questions, as per this discussion:  I'm not duplicating the discussions about reminding/educating new users to accept answers to their questions, as discussed here:  and elsewhere.   My personal rationale:  I suspect that OPs occasionally hesitate to accept an answer in hope that someone will later post a better answer even though there may already be acceptable answers provided. I know that I have done this in the past and then forgotten about my question, only to remember months or years later that I hadn't yet accepted a viable answer to my question.  For busy people, it's inconvenient to go through your activity history and find the question with the upvoted answer that still was never accepted. The inconvenience factor is enough of a deterrent that busy people don't always do it.   My proposal:  For a question with unaccepted answers for over a year, could we please alert the OP with a link (this is the key feature) to their question with a suggestion to perhaps review their question to edit it if no acceptable answers have been provided (or something like that)?  Perhaps there could be other criteria to prevent obnoxious reminders, such as the question needing to have at least 3 suggested answers or that the suggested answers must have been upvoted at least 3 times or that the question has been upvoted at least once or something like that.
42607
I don't know about you, but to me happens a lot: if I'm reading a question with a LOT of answers, (specially in a really specific question) I just read the most voted up: that's the way the system was made to be, and it's really good. The most relevant voted by the community are the first ones.  Since we have TOO many users, and a lot of them are reading the same questions and answering them almost at the same time, do you think the "urge" to be the first to answer a question and so gain reputation points makes people sometimes write things too fast and not try to really elaborate a really helpful answer? We may think: "people aren't going to read all answers, so I need to be really concerned about how fast I'm to answer". Are we incentivating "objective answers", or "not so good but objective and good to be voted up"?  I'm not trying to be unfair with all answers people here provide, we have really good ones here. But supose what I wrote above is a reality: what you think it would happen if it was a "time delay" between an "up-vote or down-vote" and it's sum in the answer? Summarizing: what if the sum wasn't almost "real time"?
14585
Why do some people post comments that are actually answers to the question? Wouldn't posting an answer be better?
29011
Is it ok to tell the OP to accept an upvoted answer? I'm asking this because in my two last answers that where upvoted by the OPs I tell them to mark as accepted if the answer worked for them and I would like to know if my attitude was correct. I said that as they do this, their accept rate will be increased.
81626
Does the OP of a question get a message in the inbox when I update my answer?  Or do I have to make all the time a comment saying "@OP I updated my answer".  (Its a bit annoying when there are a lot of requests coming after the answer, and SO suggests to move the discussion automatically to chat)
7503
I feel like there's a problem with Stack Overflow, as the number of people prowling it increases.  Each question's answers are sorted by descending score and then by descending time of posting. This means that if a person sits down and answers a question in a long, thorough way, going through every nook and cranny, once they post their answer, it will already be one of about seven different ones, some of which have already been upvoted. This wouldn't be a problem if those answers were as thorough as the one this guy's posting, but they usually aren't. Some of them are downright wrong, some aren't even answers to the question asked because their poster didn't bother to read the question all the way through.  This causes a problem I like to call Stack Overflow's Fastest Gun in the West Problem. I've come to a point where I'd rather just send a short, simple, correct explanation, than to go and do some proper research, write a whole blog post about it or even make sure the code I post even compiles, just so it will be noticed, as opposed to the incorrect ones.  I'm sure I'm not the only one doing this and that it despairs many people from even trying to answer questions.  I've long ago learned to try to always raise a problem with a solution in hand, rather than just say "This is a problem, handle it," so my question, after this long tirade, is:     How do you think this can be changed? What would you change in Stack Overflow to make this problem go away without hurting the site?   I promise to vote on answers I like, even if it takes you a long while to post them. :)
59837
I have a situation where different users have asked questions and I answered them. The problem is not that they haven't accepted the answer which can tell me that it is correct or not. But they are actually not responsive and it seems to me that answer is being ignored. Or they asked the question just for the sake of asking.  See -the user was last seen yesterday, the same day it was answered.  -the user was last seen today.   which is also upvoted by a fellow user, but the OP is seen till days after it was answered and is not even commenting.  I went through a lot of question on meta on similar situation such as  where Anna says that it is completely voluntary for users to accept it.   But then again, I believe it is becoming a fashion, to ask a question read the answer as a suggestion and leave it.  It is discouraging me. I am not saying that my answers or suggestions are 100 percent working but I atleast need be told so I can improve it. And more importantly I am not the only one facing this.  Please advise.  EDIT : Well, I got a lot of suggestions from the answers and comments combined below and I have to say that I agree with what Cody Gray has to say and just keep on answering the questions, the returns(good or bad) may be now,later or never and just move on. However, in my own defence I would also say that I did not raised this question to pin point any user but a bad practice that I find worthy of discussing. Thanks.
55077
This has been , but a long time ago, and got closed for a rather confusing reason (converting comments to answers is not an "exact duplicate" of converting answers to comments), so I'm going to bring it up again.  I think it makes sense to have a user (not asker) option to convert a comment they posted on a question to an answer on the question, if it turns out it led to the asker figuring out the answer. We've all seen askers reply to comments with "@foo Hey, that was it! Post that as an answer and I'll accept it"; why not make it simple for the user to do that? It seems trivial to implement, and there's no formatting issues like there is going from answers to questions. I'm not sure how it could be "abused", because you need less rep to answer a question than to comment on it. I don't know if the answer's post time should be the time of the comment or the time it was converted; I think probably the latter. I also don't know if the comment should be deleted, left alone, or replaced with a link to the answer; again I think probably the last