I know about similar requests, but after stumbling over this question (just an example; question poster answered himself using edits instead of an answer) I thought you should at least add an option in the flagging menu like "problem is solved in comments/edits". Then, moderators (or high-rep users) should be able to check this and maybe accept the question itself or convert the edit/comment into an answer that could at least get upvoted to show it is solved. What does the community/staff think about this?
asked Jan 18, 2015 at 6:48
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2See meta.stackexchange.com/questions/98308/…, meta.stackexchange.com/questions/74487/accepting-old-answers. Short answer: Old request, doesn't look like it will happen, not enough people think it should happen.– muruCommented Jan 18, 2015 at 10:06
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And that particular question is only partially solved: "... I still could not boot Ubuntu."– muruCommented Jan 18, 2015 at 10:08
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okay, just a suggestion. And yes, I have to admit as he wrote SOLVED at the top I did not read every line.– Byte Commander ModCommented Jan 18, 2015 at 10:33
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But to make questions like this disappear from the "unsolved" section at least an upvoted answer is needed. So what about a flag option to convert comments/edits-->answers. This would allow anybody else to vote for the answer and finally remove it from the unanswered-section without accepting by the original poster.– Byte Commander ModCommented Jan 18, 2015 at 10:57
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2you can edit out the answer part and post a community-wiki answer.– muruCommented Jan 18, 2015 at 11:09
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true. There only would be no rep bonuses for the original answerers...– Byte Commander ModCommented Jan 18, 2015 at 11:20
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1 Answer
Like you mention, the question has been asked before, and there are good reasons not to do that:
- If you only look at the huge stock of questions, waiting to review, you can imagine what happens if you add another category of jobs to be done. Judging if comments are good "candidates" to become an answer, editing them into an answer, those are mind- intensive tasks and decisions. Even more than reviewing, where you only need to read properly.
- It places moderators in a vulnerable position; even if they are of the highest integrity (which I am sure they are), they could be accused of being subjective, since deciding if an answer or comment should be an accepted answer to someone else's question, is subjective by definition.
- It would create two "classes" of acceptance, questions which are "really" accepted, and cases in which an answer or comment is promoted to an accepted answer. Not really making things clearer.
- It pollutes the voting and reputation system.
We all know good answers are neglected frequently by the original poster. To decide whether I upvote a question or not, I take into account how a poster looks after his question after he or she posted it. I'd rather see an (initially) mediocre question, edited during the process into a good question, and a poster communicating in a clear and alert way, then a seemingly good question, but no one can tell if the answer(s) were useful to OP or not.
I am afraid taking over the job from OP is not improving the process, and does not contribute to clarity at all.
answered Jan 18, 2015 at 19:02
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ok, you convinced me. Thanks for your time. And with my few three hundred something rep points I obviously can't know about how much reviewing has to be done here.– Byte Commander ModCommented Jan 18, 2015 at 19:16