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This comment appears to me to attempt to directly answer the question.

It was flagged twice as such, but declined both times.

Could a moderator please explain how it is consistent with the StackExchange comment policy?

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As has been said before, that user has been giving most excellent short answers in comments for years, and is not changing their behavior no matter how much mods beg them to do so.

Answers in comments break the content structure of this site, making it hard for other humans and algorithms to find the answer.

Still this misbehavior does not offend anyone, the damage is mostly in opportunity costs and still very low, compared to if that user just did not post anything. So nobody wants to escalate this.

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  • Tnx tkruse as an exemplar of having good sense vs. throwing the rule book as a crude and ineffective weapon. A more strong version of this answer is this — unfortunately deleted — answer.
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 24 at 3:28
  • @Lowri, the site tolerates a lot of behavios that are not exactly following rules as long as there is no direct harm. This is not giving any specific users special rights. My point is that there are a few users who are famous/notorious for acting consistently outside the rules without causing much harm, and this is one of those cases. And that Conifolds answers are excellent is common agreement in this site, see also arguments in philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/99656. I suggest you just let this go, there is nothing to be gained from fighting here.
    – tkruse
    Commented Sep 24 at 7:15
  • @tkruse. Exactly right: the particular user is notable for the excellence his contributions. Flexibility is called for: It is clear that the user prefers usually to answer in comments; and I would rather have his answers in comments than not all. This case is exceptional, however; and Lowri is right that PSE guidance is for answers not to be given in comments.
    – Geoffrey Thomas Mod
    Commented Sep 24 at 10:27
  • @tkruse there's no fight - are you misremembering another conversation? If this is indeed the case that a few famous / notorious users are tolerated for off-policy comment use, let's just make that explicit with a meta policy announcement.
    – Lowri
    Commented Sep 24 at 12:11
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    @Lowri I mean: drop the whole topic, don't try to change anything, neither behavior or rules, there is nothing broken here that needs fixing by you.
    – tkruse
    Commented Sep 24 at 13:01
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    You are trying to write something down which is not written down. That is change. I recommend you stop trying to make anyone write down anything.
    – tkruse
    Commented Sep 24 at 13:05
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The policy only recommends, and does not mandate, not answering a question in a comment. The comment in question is fairly brief and makes a contribution. However, I accept that Answers are the best place for answers and will advise relevant users accordingly. Thank you for raising the matter.

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  • Can't someone follow the lead given by a Comment and write a good Answer? It would be polite to give credit for the idea, but why not use the info given? Most of my comments are like this, but meant to show that even asking the Question is possibly not useful. I think that is fair also.
    – Scott Rowe
    Commented Sep 25 at 13:31
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It is an old tradition on the SE network to treat outstanding contributors as a special case — reflecting the general tendency of significant contributions moving from proper to common nouns.

Evidently this user makes the grade on phil-SE — already "Conifold" is moving out from being a participant proper noun to an established cited authority.

Dozens more

So...

My proposal

The proposal in short is to nominate Conifold as Jon Skeet of phil-SE.

This would of course have stayed in the realm of a joke.... were it not for ludicrously literalist members who seem to be occasional present out here.

The more serious answer

Has been considered and dealt with well on math-SE. We just need it (or something thereabouts) out here.

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  • I think making any such thing official would break the spell. Also the answering in comments IS somewhat annoying to readers in making answers harder to find, so there is that.
    – tkruse
    Commented Sep 24 at 7:19
  • @tkruse see added section
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 24 at 9:25
  • I see no solution in the math question about serial answer-commenters. Though each and any answer comments could be converted to a community-wiki answer, I doubt anyone wants to do that continuously for ever new question
    – tkruse
    Commented Sep 24 at 9:45
  • This answer is sufficiently heavily upvoted that it (specifically para 2) looks like the math-SE consensus. It also points to this even more succinct and almost as heavily upvoted answer
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 24 at 9:48
  • Yes, I saw that, and it's wonderful for individual comments, but it does not help with a member doing so ALL THE TIME.
    – tkruse
    Commented Sep 24 at 13:03
  • @tkruse It seems to me, there is a rather judicious use of commenting when considered as a whole. I know both of you make good use of comments! I second Conifold's nomination, btw.
    – J D
    Commented Sep 24 at 22:12

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