turn answer into comment

Question

This question has a new comment by Alper. As far as I remember this comment has been an answer before.

For my own answers I could, from 50 rep onwards, make such a transition myself: delete my answer and post a new comment. But who is able to do this for other users's answers? Is there a function for direct transformation? What is the recommended action if I think this should be done, but do not have enough reputation to do it myself - flag the answer for moderator attention? And will the user in question get a message for explanation? I mean - it could be a bit puzzling to learn "Thank you for A, but you should have done B, which however you are not allowed to do, so we did it for you."

Answer 1

Whenever we see an answer which is wrong, misleading, just a copy of an existing answer, or not an answer at all, we have the option to:

• edit it to improve it.
• downvote it. (requires 125 reputation on a beta site)
• vote to delete it. (requires downvotes and 4k reputation on beta sites)
• Flag it for moderator attention for deletion or conversion to a comment.

It happens quite often that unregistered or low rep users who are not able to comment everywhere (>50 rep.) post a comment or a question as an answer. These posts will be deleted or converted to a comment on request, or after we had received a moderator flag.

Sometimes a system-wide robot (Community Moderator) will cast a flag on low qualtiy post which then will put them in the review queue for us to decide further actions.

Also see:

• What posts should be flagged for deletion?

Sometimes such posts will not add any value to a question. These posts may be deleted without conversion to a comment. In the example you mentioned this could be debated, as we already have an accepted answer saying the same.