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Lately I've noticed users leaving comments (additional questions for the OP) as answers to their questions - which isn't desired.

I understand for Ubuntu Community members joining the site who are used to listserves and Forums and are not used to the distinguishment between Answers and Comments. Currently I've been leaving comments for those Answers detailing that it would be better suited as a Comment and have considered emailing users who do this frequently directly to help explain the process further.

I'm looking for suggestions from the community on how to best handle these instances.

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It seems to me that your solutions are reasonable. From what I've seen leaving comments to encouraging users to fix the problem themselves seem like the preferred solution.

It's also good to remember that comments (except on a user's own questions and answers) require a slightly higher reputation (50).

There have been several discussions related to this on the Meta Stack Overflow and Meta Stack Exchange sites. I've linked to a couple that I think have really useful answers. (The Meta Stack Exchange one has a top answer from Stack Exchange Community Coordiantor Robert Cartaino.) There are several more related questions if you want to look around on Meta Stack Overflow.

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    I wonder if lowering the comment threshold - or removing it all together - would be a more worthwhile step.
    – Marco Ceppi Mod
    Commented Aug 28, 2010 at 22:29
  • @MarcoCeppi Lowering that threshold is unlikely to receive any quarter from the powers that be. See this answer from Jeff Atwood on Meta Stack Overflow.
    – moberley
    Commented Aug 30, 2010 at 3:50
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    In this question it seems like the user is forced to leave further information as an answer because they don't have enough rep to comment on their own question. (Or, they're just confused?) I don't see how this is helping anyone. If this is supposed to be used for user support, it needs to allow people to actually ask a first question (and to iterate to supply data.) If they're blocked, you're wasting their time and mine.
    – poolie
    Commented Sep 26, 2011 at 7:22
  • There is no justification for new users to leave additional information as answers in their own questions, because even with a rep value of 1 you can edit and comment your own questions. And if you are answering you can edit your own answer. BUT, I agree that not being able to comment gets frustrating when for example, you found that you have a question that someone has asked already but no one answered and it has been dead for months, then you can't comment on it to remind them that an answer is still needed, this happened to me a couple of days ago when I was new to askubuntu.
    – JorgeArtware
    Commented Jul 13, 2013 at 8:50

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