Please do not answer in the comments

Question

Please, do not answer in the comments. Stack Exchange sites are designed to have a question and answer(s) format. Comments cannot be effectively moderated and may easily be removed. Use the answer section to post answers to the question.

Here are some reasons for this:

• Your answer is less likely to be seen. Comments don't bump questions to the top of the active filter, but new answers do.
• A vital part of Stack Exchange is allowing the community to indicate the value and usefulness of answers by voting up or down. The default sort order causes good content to rise to the top. Comments can be upvoted, but are not sorted by vote. They cannot be downvoted if they are wrong.
• Comments don't contribute to our answer ratio or answer rate. As a beta site, we really need to work on improving those numbers. An "answered" question is one that has an upvoted or accepted answer. No matter how awesome the comments on a question are, the system won't consider it answered.
• Unlike posts, comments cannot be edited to fix typos, update links, and make other corrections that improve and maintain the quality of the site.
• Comments do not support their own comment threads, so their content is difficult to discuss and clarify.
• Deleted answers can be seen by their authors and users who have gained the moderator tools privilege, so they may often still be salvaged or undeleted after deletion. Only moderators can see deleted comments.
• Comments cannot be marked as accepted answers. Great answers deserve to be recognized by the asker.

Further reading:

• Answer or comment: what's the etiquette? (meta.SE)
• Please stop posting half answers and dumb advice as comments (askubuntu.SE)

Answer 1

Understood, but I've also seen (at least on other StackExchange sites) that one-line answers are discouraged. And people who do submit one-line answers often get down-voted. So StackExchange has a conundrum. Would you really rather I not have written anything at all? Or did you find value in hearing about my experience or opinion as a one-line comment? As a question-asker, I tend to really appreciate ANY interactions, even when they are one line rather than thorough official answers.

By the way, I'm a HUGE StackExchange fan. It's my favorite site on the internet.

But also, isn't it weird that you're posting this request as a question, and here I am responding as an answer, which makes no sense? So it seems that StackExchange's framework is a little weird here too in Meta.