There is a number of 'unanswered' questions which are not going to generate any further discussion because they have been answered succinctly in the comments. This is irritating when browsing the list of 'unanswered' questions. What can we do about this?

Would it be possible to implement some feature that lets moderators/users mark a question as 'answered', even if there have been no formal answers (so long as the question has been satisfactorily answered in the comments)? (Or transform a satisfactory comment into an answer, etc.)

• meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/1148/… – Martin Sleziak Dec 16 '13 at 6:35
• @MartinSleziak That question is somewhat different: it asks what to do if your question was answered in comments. – Post No Bulls Dec 16 '13 at 6:53
• Just answer the question? Reputation doesn't mean anything, but if it bothers you to gain rep from other users' answers, make it CW. Or, ideally, expand the comment into a fuller answer. Either way – davidlowryduda Dec 16 '13 at 7:09
• @mixedmath In retrospect, this wasn't clear from my question, but I meant to refer to questions with no accepted answers. – Newb Dec 16 '13 at 19:33
• Ah yes. In fact, so had I. – davidlowryduda Dec 16 '13 at 23:47

The procedure used by the Crusade of answers, which specializes in trying to reduce the unanswered questions queue, is a synthesis of the aforementioned strategies:

1. Consider if there is a legitimate reason to vote to move/delete/close the question.
2. If not, ask the commenter using the @ feature to convert his/her comment to an answer.
3. If there's no response from the author after a day or two, write a CW answer attributed appropriately.
4. Even though the question has an answer, it will remain in the unanswered queue as long as its solutions have $0$ (or fewer) total votes each. So, one can then visit the Crusade of answers and drop a message requesting readers to evaluate a CW conversion. If it's OK it'll get a vote or more and be resolved!