I just went through the close review queue and found the following questions which are typical of a problem I've been seeing recently:
Neither question has any upvotes, both have close votes, both have answers in the comments, both have thank you messages from the OP stating that their question has been answered (by said comments).
Am I right in thinking that a question should either be answered or closed, but not both? I see users, often with very high rep providing answers in comments.
I keep hearing the same arguments against answering in comments:
- Comments bypass the quality controls because they can't be downvoted
- Comments can't be accepted as an answer forcing the next user to read the comment chain to find the answer (something that annoys me about most non-Stack Exchange Q&A sites because most comments are irrelevant to the answer)
Also, from what I've seen, if the question has been correctly answered (either in an answer or a comment) people are less likely to post an(other) answer.
Is there any reason why these arguments are invalid on English.SE? Is answering in comments acceptable? If not, how do we encourage users to stop doing it?
