Increasingly people only write comments or even lengthy comments to questions or existing answers.
I do believe this is bad. To improve this site's content we should put more effort in writing good answers than in writing many comments.
Have I missed any good reason why writing an answering comment instead of an answer makes sense?
A comment is (or should be) a critique of a question. As such, it corresponds more closely to editing than answering. You should edit if you feel that you can do a better job of fixing the question (e.g. a misspelling in German) than the OP. But a valid comment might be, "you need to add a link," or you need to provide more context or evidence of research," which is the OP's responsibility.
If you can answer the question, then do so, rather than comment. OK, a good comment might be, "you might want to check the attached link." But if you feel that you (the native speaker) are likely to understand the material in the link better than the OP, then put the link along with your explanation in the answer (not comment) box. It's that simple.
Pure speculation: This may be the result of some of the downvote sprees that occurred in the past. You can't downvote comments. People don't like being downvoted. Ergo: People write more comments.
The intention and purpose of comments are clearly outlined in the FAQ to be read at the point when we gain the privilege to comment:
In any case we should be aware that comments are temporary only and may be deleted any time, e.g. for clean up.
Lengthy comment threads will not help finding an answer to a given question but will rather clutter answers to a question with more or less relevant details. Therefore it is much better to edit or suggest an edit when there are obvious errors. In case we have additional information we may consider writing an anwer.
After sucessful clarification from a comment on a post we then should delete the comment. See also:
Please do not use comments on discussions that are not related to the question or answer, as these comments will have to be deleted as off topic in any case.
To discuss matters all of us are invited to join our chat room where we can talk in both German, an English. Transcripts of the chat will not be deleted. Therefore we can search and read even old discussion in the chat transcripts. This can not be done with comments.
Note that there is no reputation limit to suggest an edit, and the privilege to talk in chat needs less reputation than posting comments. This is intentional to make comments less attractive for discussions or for improving posts.
Related further reading:
I have in the past often put a little effort into writing a comment when I did not want to put more effort into answer. Since this is not appreciated, I will n the future refrain from putting any effort into participating here.
That comments are often just deleted annoys me a lot.
