Should users refrain from answers (or partial answers) in comments?

Question

There are situations, when you know something that is related to the question, but it's too insubstantial to be a proper answer. For example, let's imagine a question:

In which edition of game X dwarves are allowed to play as mages?

Now, let's say that I know a bit of game X, but I haven't played in a while and I know that in editions 1 and 2, there were no dwarven mages. I do a bit of search over the internet but can't find much, and since the question still has no answer, I put a comment:

I'm sure that they are not allowed in editions 1 and 2, so it had to be in 3rd or higher

This is definitely not enough to make a good answer, but at least it is useful information. Yet, I've noticed that such comments are getting moderated with "do not answer in comments!" messages from the mods. I'm just curious why? Isn't providing a bit of relevant information better than not providing anything at all?

This post is not in regard to any question in particular, but I've noticed this weird trend in RPG.SE that is not present in other SE pages.

---

Return to FAQ Index

Answer 1

You should not answer in comments.

Not partial answers, not full answers. Not "leads on" an answer. Not "I would answer but I'm tired/just woke up/am drunk so I'll just say this..." Not answers that you think aren’t good enough to post as answers. Not little helpful tips, not helpful suggestions, not useful anecdotes. These will be deleted. Answer in answers.

And if your answer isn’t even good enough for you to want to put it in an answer post, just don’t post it at all then.

Answering in comments does the following things:

1. It bypasses question closure. They're closed for a reason.
2. It provides an answer that can't be marked as an answer for future people's knowledge.
3. It contributes to long comment debates as you can comment on an answer, but it's unclear what you're commenting on in a comment thread.
4. It is "cheating" by locking your answer to the top. Accepted answers or answers with higher scores should go to the top to indicate their quality. Bypassing that by sticking your answer in a comment on the question is unacceptable.
5. It bypasses all our quality control mechanisms: we can't downvote your "answer", edit it, or comment on it to request clarification or improvements. Answers also bump a question to the top so that people will scrutinize the answer; comments don't do this.
6. It gets in the way of people who are busy using comments correctly to improve the question.

The long and short of it is, every part of how the site functions, all of which have lengthy justification as being part of the process of SE - rep, answers, accepts, edits, votes, etc. - is obviated by using comments for answers. So every good goal of all that functionality is nullified by this practice.

Now, "but the hapless questioner could use that info!" In nearly all cases, someone posts the same information in a much more comprehensive answer. Or take the time yourself to write a real answer. We don't like crappy questions or crappy answers, and we'd rather not have the Q or A than to have one that doesn't meet site quality (hence closes/deletes, part of the standard SE functionality). If you don't care enough to write a real answer: don't. The likelihood that you're the only person in the world or on the site that knows that bit of info is very small.

While users are welcome to steal the info in the comments to generate answers of their own, that will not slow the pace of dealing with the answers-in-comments via flagging and deletion.

Answer 2

I'll step in and provide some background here -- the reason why you see things that resemble "partial answers" in other Stacks is because troubleshooting is an iterative process. "Try turning it off and on again" is not an answer -- yet it may not be possible for anyone to answer the question well without the querent being guided through troubleshooting steps in the comments first, some of which may resemble speculative "answers" to the uninitiated. This is an OK use of the comment system in context -- the commentator is helping the querent improve the question at that point, and speculative, "throw it at the wall and see if it sticks" answers are pretty much low quality by definition.

In the RPG.SE space, by and large, though, that's not true -- we don't deal with the type of technical-troubleshooting questions that necessitate this iterative behavior much at all! Since we don't need to accommodate these answer-bits-in-comments, we don't.

Answer 3

Answering questions can be a collaborative process

Banning users from working together or sharing information leads to lower quality answers. Information is good and useful and can be used to build a high quality answer, but that isn't possible if there is no way to communicate.

As much as it would be great to think that each answer is totally independent and there is no iterative process, that isn't true.

It can be difficult to formulate an entire answer in 1 go. You need to read bits and pieces here and there, some from the core rules, jump through feat/class/skill descriptions, trawl faqs and erratas, look at designer tweets, etc.

Sourcing all of these pieces of the puzzle can be difficult. Posting a partial answer would be helpful for other users to incorporate into a final complete answer. Otherwise there is a situation where a number of users each know most of the answer, but no one has a complete answer.

Your choices are:

1. Post a partial answer and accept that the punishment for sharing what you know is to be downvoted.
2. Wait for someone else to post a partial answer, then comment presenting what you do know.
3. Wait for someone else to post a partial answer, then incorporate their post into what you know and post your answer, downvoting theirs.
4. Leave the thread alone, eventually someone will conduct enough research to present a complete answer.

Or, post the partial answer as a comment so that other answerers build on it. Once an answer is made then the comments can be flagged as redundant. I believe this is the cleanest and most effective solution.

On the main site you can comment partial answers

The arguments presented by Mxyzplk don't really hold up to any amount of scrutiny.

It bypasses question closes. They're closed for a reason.

Nothing is bypassed, partial answers are not answers. Comments are allowed for a reason, comments can lead to reopening.

It provides an answer that can't be marked as an answer for future people's knowledge.

You can always make an answer, copy paste the comment, and credit the user

It contributes to long comment debates as you can comment on an answer, but it's unclear what you're commenting on in a comment thread.

By this logic all comments are bad.

It is "cheating" by locking your answer to the top. Answers with higher votes/accepted answers should go to the top to indicate their quality. Bypassing that by sticking your answer in a comment on the question is unacceptable.

Votes indicate popularity, not quality, and comments are not answers. Comments cannot earn rep and are ephemeral. There is no competition.

It bypasses all our quality control mechanisms: we can't downvote your "answer", edit it, or comment on it to request clarification or improvements. Answers also bump a question to the top so that people will scrutinize the answer; comments don't do this.

Comments are not answers in the first place. Every day I see people reply for comments asking for clarification or making suggestions.

It gets in the way of people who are busy using comments correctly to improve the question.

While SE's designer obviously has a lot of problems, you shouldn't actively make the site worse just to work within that problematic design. Barring multiple discussions in one comment thread is bad for everyone.