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I've been looking through unanswered questions, working my way from older ones. I seem to notice a trend where someone posted a good comment, that really could have been a legitimate answer. What could I do to help with this trend?

Is there a type of flag to migrate a comment into an answer?

Otherwise, would it be a reasonable thing to do to take the good comment, copy it into an answer with links giving it credit, add any additional information of my own and post it?

Here is an example: blackened carrot cake

Another example: If bacon tastes like fish, is it still good to eat?

One more: Is cooked fish as perishable as raw fish?

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  • Strongly related: meta.cooking.stackexchange.com/q/1919/1672 (it's also about community so not an exact duplicate)
    – Cascabel Mod
    Commented Dec 12, 2014 at 23:03
  • You might be interested to know that with your first example, the same person who posted the comment had originally posted it as an answer, then subsequently deleted it and reposted as a comment. It looks like the answer had been downvoted, and maybe she thought it wasn't complete enough to be an answer. I do agree with Jefromi, but I'd place special emphasis on the "clean them up first" aspect.
    – Aaronut
    Commented Dec 20, 2014 at 19:41

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Just write answers!

Mods can't migrate comment -> answer, only answer -> comment. This is probably reasonable, because even really great comments often aren't long and detailed enough to make a real answer.

So if you can write answers based on what's in the comments, go for it. Just keep in mind that you'll generally have to add a bit to make them complete answers, and since you're putting your name on it, if the comments should turn out to have left out an important detail (or even be wrong) then you'll be on the hook for it. Note that in the examples you gave, some of the comments are more in the direction of good guesses than solid confident answers.

But yes, we really want answers (as evidenced by the ability to search for unanswered ones), so you're doing us a service by fleshing out comments into actual answers.

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  • Thanks a lot, I'll try that approach, hopefully this helps clear up some of those really old question!
    – Phrancis
    Commented Dec 13, 2014 at 4:45

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