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My question is-

What do we do for questions that have (very) acceptable comments as answers (even accepted by OP) but due to absence of an answer, the questions tend to remain un-answered.

I've observed several instances of this on EL&U and other sites on the SE network, so decided to ask this question. Now, it might be closed as a duplicate very soon, because there does exist another question with the same topic, here on Meta English SE and another question here

How to handle old questions with answers stuck in a comment?

and

Why are answers being posted in the comments on the question?

The first question is somewhat old(asked in 2013), and the latest answer seems to be -

I guess I am not surprised that no one bothered to answer the question I actually asked... but it sounds like there is no comment-to-answer flag and no official StackExchange tool to do this. So the answer to this question is, "No, there is no way to do this aside from copying the comment manually and posting it as an answer."

The reason I ask this again is I think a new question might catch more attention than an update to an old one.

And an answer for the second question says-

There are at least two reasons why I sometimes post answers as comments...

I voted to close the question. Perhaps I consider it "off-topic", so I don't want to see multiple answers being voted on. But if I think I know the answer and can easily express it in a comment, I often do this.

I don't have the time/inclination/knowledge to provide a full answer, so I put down something in a brief comment, hoping someone else will pick up the ball and run with it.

While I am completely for comments being posted, I an just curious about the (expanding list of) unanswered questions, due to lack of answers. But maybe there is already a tool for it,and I'm not aware of the same?

Thank You.

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  • You tagged this as feature request. What exactly is the feature you're requesting?
    – Mitch
    Jul 30, 2014 at 16:19
  • another: meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/4984/…
    – Mitch
    Jul 30, 2014 at 16:20
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    I'll hang fire awaiting clarification. Are you in fact requesting a feature whereby someone (who?) can "autoconvert" a comment to an answer? I have to say I see no real point in that - cut&paste is so easy it hardly seems worth bothering with anything more dedicated to the task. Besides, in some cases the original commenter might have good reason not to want his username associated with an "answer" which he only posted as a "comment". Comments are always deletable by the poster, but sometimes answers aren't.
    – FumbleFingers
    Jul 30, 2014 at 16:27
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    Being able to promote comments to answers is a request that comes up quite regularly. You might wish to check out this meta Meta post, and the related ones linked from there. Executive summary: it's probably not coming any time soon.
    – RegDwigнt
    Jul 31, 2014 at 19:58
  • Thanks for reraising this evergreen topic. I've just provided a response—to the question posed in the first link that you cite above, in hopes of keeping the discussion less fragmented than seems likely if we continually respond to new iterations of the same basic question. But I agree with you that EL&U has yet to satisfactorily resolve the problem (if it is a problem).
    – Sven Yargs
    Aug 7, 2014 at 23:23

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