Possible alternatives to repeatedly commenting

Question

(See also here, but this is on a much shorter timespan.)

Today, I just had a couple of experiences with using comments for this question I just asked that makes me wonder if answers could be used to clarify other answers, if it's better to make an edit in the question to respond to that answer, or it's best to leave it as is. (I'm more used to standard forums than this format, hence why I'm asking.)

The first experience that I had was that when I was trying to explain my thought process (in which I eventually found an error) in response to an answer, it didn't fit in a single comment, so I split it up into two comments.

The second was when I posted some results, I noticed that I had formatted them in the way I was using, which was different from the answerer's format. So, trying to avoid confusion, I tried to edit my comment at this point to acknowledge the difference, but was blocked from doing so because more than five minutes had passed since I posted it. Again, I ended up posting yet another comment to fix this.

But then this brings up a point: was this the best way to add this info? Or should I have posted my clarification as an answer, or even edited the question to lay out the thought process and its error? I know that repeatedly posting on forums is considered to be annoying (as one can edit their own posts there), but given the differences in editing protocol, does that translate to here with comments?

Answer 1

I wouldn't recommend posting comments pertaining to answers on some question as answers itself. Because that's not what an answer does.

Rather, try to post the comments as concisely as possible, and use multiple comments if needed. Remember the 5 minute edit span, and make sure you are writing your stuff in a finalized way.

However, if your comments are really too long and you feel uncomfortable posting multiple comments, use the chat! You can always invite an user (in this case, the answerer) to chat by clicking on their chat profile and creating a room with them. Make sure you post a link to the chat in the comments (e.g., here). Note that you'll automatically be suggested to continue discussion in chat if the discussion on the comments get way too long. But you can do it manually whenever you want anyway.