In this post I answered with a short question and it turned into a comment. I don't have enough rep to comment, but is this an acceptable way to circumvent that restriction? Or is this a mistake on askubuntu's part? I guess my real question is whether this is a feature or a bug.
Edit: To clarify, this is better than if it remained an answer, I was just curious if it was intended.
Very short answers with links to other posts in them get counted as "trivial". They're almost always signposts. And while you might call this a loophole, it's not a very useful loophole for bad people.
There is also a mechanism to manually convert answers to comments.
Is this an acceptable way to circumvent that restriction?
Well hacking the automated version means posting linking to other posts. Suggesting a duplicate might be a better course of action but I guess you can't do that either. Yeah, that's okay. Why not. It'll help people close it as a duplicate if nothing else.
For longer comments (eg asking about their problem) it's a balance between being helpful and annoying the moderators and flaggers. A real person is going to have to come in and click stuff, pull levers, etc to turn your post into a comment.
Insightful and helpful comments will likely see most of the comments converted.
Inane banter will likely see them deleted with prejudice, leading to an automated answer ban.
Ideally a couple of hours grinding the review queue, and suggesting a small pile of good edits is enough to get people over the 50 rep line. Of course a good answer is gold but harder technically.
I guess my real question is whether this is a feature or a bug.
The automated "trivial answer" thing is definitely a feature. It cuts out the very laziest answers from all corners right off the bat. But the whole answer→comment system recognises that:
Essentially: Because humans are dirty, stupid meatbags that can't be predicted.
