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Several users tend to give the gist of an answer in a comment under the question. This is bad as it cannot be accepted and cannot be voted upon. Every now and then such an answer is formulated poorly and hence is misleading, or it is straight out false. Does this merit flagging the comment?

The intention of the user is not trolling, but how else can you signal disagreement with a comment?

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Comments are there to request clarification on questions, or to point out problems with answers.

A comment that's a pseudo-answer isn't there to request clarification, so it's good to flag it as not constructive, so that it can be deleted.

You can also choose to take what's written in the comment as the basis for writing your own answer. Just add a short note crediting the commenter too: you'll get the rep points anyway, and hopefully next time they'll provide a proper answer themselves.

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Breaking the implied practice that should be followed here, I will go on and answer rather than comment :)

What I have seen and what I do is handle such misleading or outright wrong comments by posting below it a comment directed to the commenter (i.e. including its @username in the comment). The OP will be notified in any case.

I don't see flagging as the efficient solution here, since the moderators in the SE world are not "truth guardians".

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  • $\begingroup$ If it was decided to have the mods remove every answer-as-comment, regardless of whether it is a good answer or not, then the mods wouldn't be put into a position to be the sole judges of whether or not the answer-comments are good or not. $\endgroup$
    – Ben Miller
    Dec 4, 2016 at 2:35
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I agree with Alecos. I think we should treat the comments as a discussion area where it is okay to correct people who are wrong (and to be corrected yourself), with a view on converging on a good question/answer.

If we insist that only correct comments survive then we take a step closer to the philosophically dangerous world in which comments are accepted as being a susbstantive part of the content of record of this site. But the SE sites are supposed to be designed in such a way that the questions and answers contain the relevant content and the comments are purely incidental.

In other words, I think we should worry less about removing incorrect comments, and more about ensuring that a correct and satisfactory answer eventually gets posted.

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