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Each time I visit this site, I often see that a question has no good answer in the answer section, but actually several good candindates for answer in the comments on the question.

Why are people here so reluctant to post their brilliant suggestions as an answer?

See for example this question. Here we see that there are two answers, but they are obviously wrong, and properly down-voted (proof that the SE voting system works as intended).

In the comment-section there are several answers that are potentially the correct one, but since they are posted as comments, and not answers, they are drowning in the long list of comments on the question.

If they were posted as answers instead of comments, it would open up for comments on each suggestion, instead of a long foum-like thread in the top comment on the question, that is hard to find out what is actually proposed.

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    Because the commenters in that question are only making informed "guesses", and this site doesn't exactly welcome opinions, or intuitive "hunches", but (mostly) supported facts. Of which its drawbacks are illustrated perfectly here.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Dec 5, 2016 at 10:11
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    But informed guesses are perfectly good answers as they add value to a question as a proposed answer. Then you can leave up to others to help verify how correct that answer is. Like it is now, this approach just makes this site "just another forum site" and not taking advantage of the excellent mechanisms we have in the Stack Exchange network!
    – awe
    Dec 5, 2016 at 10:19
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    I don't think that is a very good example. It is not anywhere obvious that the ideas the commenters are pursuing are the true answer.
    – Mitch
    Dec 5, 2016 at 13:49

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