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My question is related to What should one do when one's question has been answered in the comments? but asked from the commenter point of view.

If you are the user who left the comment and there are no one else who answer it for a while, should you convert your comment to answer - even if the OP does not ask you to do so?

The reason I think this should be the case is that it might best to to keep down unanswered questions to a minimum on the site, especially now math se is now the 2nd biggest stack exchange site.

related: This is perhaps a stupid idea, but I feel even a stupid idea might be worth discussing:

can we consider a new feature to allow comment answers to be accepted or would this be too much hassle?

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    $\begingroup$ You can ask the commenter to upgrade their comment to an answer :-) If you are the commenter, you can always add an answer with the same content, if it is actually an answer. $\endgroup$
    – robjohn Mod
    Jan 7, 2014 at 12:39
  • $\begingroup$ @robjohn hi rob, maybe, i should make this more explicit, i am, sometimes, the commentor, i wonder if i should change my behaviour? also btw i am not sure if you saw the comment i left in the chat: i like your avatar. it is pretty clever $\endgroup$
    – Lost1
    Jan 7, 2014 at 12:40
  • $\begingroup$ I often leave comments asking people who basically answered a question in a comment if they'd like to flesh out their comment into an answer to get things out of the unanswered queue. If more commenters were in the habit of writing answers (perhaps after some time has passed) already, I think it would be a good thing. $\endgroup$
    – Mark S.
    Jan 9, 2014 at 3:01

1 Answer 1

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Generally, comments are for clarification, but it's not a hard and fast rule and it's often also a good place to leave hints if you don't have the time to write a fully fleshed-out answer. If you leave a hint or a 'bare bones' answer in a comment, and no one else writes an answer, I think the decision to turning it into an answer is down to you. Certainly the site would be better off with less questions in the unanswered queue. There's also the option of you suggesting to the OP or other users to write their own answer using your comment.

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