Answers on comment section?

Question

I noticed that somewhat Islam SE users do not add their answers to answer section. Instead they are using comment section. From first page I got these:

• What caused the decline of the Bani Hashim, what form did the decline take, and why did it happen so quickly?

• Zina, promise of marriage

• Signs from animals or otherthings

• Hazrat Abu Bakr altercation with Hazrat Aisha?

• Should I make up for 6-10 years of possibly invalid prayer and fasts?

• Are there any groups within Islam that reject Tafhim al-Qur'an by Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi?

• Saying talaq 2 times in mind

There are many others in which users give answer in comment section.

In regarding this behavior, I observed that people do not add answers unless they give long explanation and references.

Recently @Sassir commented on my answer as "This really doesn't look like an elaborated answer" on this question: Punishment for killing your slave?

My answer was "Does everything needs elaborated answer?"

Combining these two, I want to ask; is giving answers in comment O.K.? Should we add these "comment-answers" to as answers?

p.s. I found just these two question in meta maybe somewhat related, but they are talking on different subjects:

• The pseudo-plagiarisms and expert answers on Islamic rulings

• How should we deal with “half-answers”?

p.s.2: My concern is, if we do not give enough answers to a question, we will be beta forever.

StackExchange meta suggest adding these comments as community wiki: Question with no answers, but issue solved in the comments

Answer 1

Does it fully and completely answer the question? Post it as an answer.

Does it not fully and completely answer the question? Don't post it as an answer.

The crux of this issue seems to be less about whether or not to post an answer as an answer, so much as whether or not to post an answer as an answer even if it's not a good answer.

If it's a truly bad answer, it probably should not be posted anywhere. But if it must get posted, it's important that it gets posted as an answer so that the community peer-review can actually judge its merit and, if necessary, vote it down so that everyone else can see that it's a bad answer.

If it's an okay answer (but not a great answer) it's still important to post it as an answer. The community peer-review is essential to how the Stack Exchange model works; if only great answers are posted as answers, while "okay" answers and "bad" answers are relegated to comments, there is absolutely no way for future users to rely on peer-review to determine which of those comment-answers are "okay" and which ones are "bad" (especially if there's still no "great" answers to read instead). And with no way to distinguish "okay" from "bad", it's pretty much impossible (or at least highly disrecommended) to trust any comment-answer for any reason.

And if the answer can't be trusted, there's pretty much no value in posting it.

I have seen many users use comments to post answers explicitly because they're trying to avoid downvotes. For users who understand how the Stack Exchange model works, this is usually a very good sign that the poster doesn't actually trust his own answer, or knows that it's not even welcome on the site as an answer for whatever reason. In other words, they know that any such answer needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

For future users who don't know the Stack Exchange model, however, this will often be the first "answer" they see; comments can garner upvotes which promotes them to the user's view, but they by design can never be downvoted, never be improved, and are pretty much immune to any form of constructive criticism or peer-review that makes Stack Exchange answers actually valuable. This gives them undue weight which makes them seem more valuable than they actually are.

This is why I'll purge answers whenever they're posted as comments; whether they're "right" or "wrong", "good" or "bad" is irrelevant: Comments have a very particular use, and that very particular use is not answering questions.

If your comment provides a hint or a suggestion that can help the questioner or a future answerer to develop a full answer, go ahead: Comments are great for that. If you're not 100% sure about your answer, go ahead and say that you think maybe possibly the answer might be such-and-such but you're not sure and will look into it later, knock yourself out: Speculation and guesswork isn't an answer, but it can totally help others find the answer.

But comments that deign to answer the question itself, even if you don't have the time or inclination to make it great instead of just okay, should still be posted as answers. Or not posted at all.

(As a side note, any question that can be fully and completely answered in a single comment is possibly a terrible question in the first place.)

Even if you can't be bothered to dig up all the references and do all the research to make an incredible answer, that doesn't mean your answer is worthless, or even bad; sometimes any answer is still better than no answer. But if nobody's posting okay answers as answers, nobody else is going to feel encouraged to do so either. So you end up with a bunch of unanswered questions, or questions which attract a lot of bad answers, not because because nobody knows the right answers but because nobody is willing to post the right answers because they're not "great" enough.

We're trying to make the Internet a better place here. As long as posting an "okay" answer is better than the alternative, post it. Otherwise, don't. But either way, an answer is still an answer, not a comment.

Answer 2

I confess that I'm mostly doing it the same as GreatBigBore.

Especially when a question is a new unregistered users question I'm in first place checking whether he can get his information from other posts and maybe give a short answer. First it's unclear whether this user will ever come back and read, so why waste some time to answer a question that in ~80% of the cases has already an answer or could easily be answered if one just do some search here on the main site. Second if the person is/was interested in having more information he/she would come back and ask for.
See for example here.

Sometimes I leave a comment hoping that somebody else would give a full answer. Or with the intention to answer the question when I might have time (for example when I'm online with my smartphone). Note when i started here I once gave a answer draft and it was deleted by a Mod because (low-quality maybe plagiarism, as it was 90% a quote) therefore I'm very careful in giving half-answers, so if i felt like answering would take too long and I had made my research, but have only the time to start answering I would point at it in a post.

And maybe I got tired and bored of all these dream-interpretation, talaq, advice-request questions, so that I don't feel like answering any rather than giving a hint of the answer as a comment. On the other hand as an example: I think 90%-99% of the question about zakat zakat are about how to calculate zakat for a very special situation (IMO those are all duplicates, as one needs to know the rule and then apply it, we can't apply it here for every case, as we need more information).

Answer 3

• I'm referring to my comment on your answer:

IMO it is too short and should be explained, have you checked whether life for life is applied in case of a master who killed his slave? I guess not.

• Now on other comments I'm involved:

You may see that my answer is more or less a guess or something I'm not sure about and need to look for or a hint for OP to either elaborate his question or show, that this question might be hard to answer. If OP wants this as an answer I'd post it, but honestly I don't like to post something I'm not sure about as an answer, especially if it is a fiqh issue!

IMO comments are there to:

• give a hint for the OP to elaborate his question, if information is missing,
• or maybe correct a false view if one doesn't have an answer but noticed that OP's view was wrong in some part of the question.
• or discussing answers,
• asking for elaboration on some points quoted in an answer or question,
• pointing at some missing or good things in answers or question in general
• And maybe for not fully answers if doesn't know the full answer,
• or as a hint to already given solutions
• or parts of the solution of a problem....

For example if you followed the comment discussion here a fast answer was needed and Medi1 gave it and many have objected this answer as it seemed a bad advice. But later Medi1 posted a full answer explaining the Issue and why saying one should go along fasting was a necessary answer, as any other advice at the time maybe would be misleading and bad.