Finding questions which are answered in comments?

Question

It is a common problem in Stack Exchange when users use comments to write answers instead of posting them as actual answers in the answer box. Sometimes, the motive for doing so is legit, but it is still a problem:

• question remains officially unanswered;
• it is difficult to find the answer in a pile of comments;
• it leads to duplicates (because the answer was not found), etc.

More on this has been discussed in GIS Meta before. Refer to:

• Can we enforce the "Answers in Answer section" rule more? (Feb/2017).
• Should I post answers to questions that already have answers as a comment? (Dec/2014).
• What happens to questions with no answer where person asking told the question is not relevant anymore? (Apr/2014).
• Too many questions left unanswered when answer inside comments? (Jul/2012).
• Answering questions with a comment? (Aug/2011).
• What should be done with questions that have been self-resolved as a comment instead of an answer? (canonical post from Meta Stack Exchange).

If I want to do something about it, how can I find such questions? Maybe a Stack Exchange Data Explorer (SEDE) query?

Answer 1

I am sharing a query in SEDE to help finding questions which were answered in comments.

It searches for questions with no answers, which are not closed and are not locked. Under such questions OP uses one of two keywords in comments: solved or worked. One needs to type a tag name as a parameter from the query.

Testing this query for the arcpy tag returned 24 questions, in which approximately 20 were true positives. It seems the query despite simple, has potential. It can also be forked and improved.

What I have done (or plan to do) with such questions is one of the following:

• Ask* the owner of comment which answered the question to post it as an answer;
• Ask* OP to add a self-answer and point him/her to the Can I answer my own question? section from our help center;
• Answer it myself (if I can comprehend what the answer means and can support it);
• Vote to close as 'This problem cannot or can no longer be reproduced';
• Downvote question and make it nearer the auto-deletion scripts.

*In such cases, I usually offer myself to come back after the answer is posted (as long I am @AndreSilva pinged) and upvote it.