Review actions on low-quality answers that should be comments by folks with <50 reputation?

Question

I mostly flag answers that are low in quality for moderator attention, and place a comment under them saying "this answer is more of a comment". Mostly this works fine.

However, when the answer is posted by someone with insufficient reputation to comment, and I flag the answer by doing the same thing as described above, then basically the person cannot share any info.

From my point of view I think "everyone 's been there, start collecting rep if you like to participate". However, I quite often receive comments from other (experienced) users saying "The poster doesn't have enough reputation to comment". In other words, they basically say "Stop flagging newbie's answers, as they cannot comment".

Is there a consensus for this issue at CogSci? Suppose that the answer clearly is more of a comment. For example, a personal experience, or a few sentences claiming perhaps valid stuff or educated guesses, but unsupported by references.

Answer 1

Answers on a Stack Exchange site need to meet certain criteria. Answers which do not meet this criteria are either comments (and will be converted to comments) or noise (and will be downvoted and deleted)

If a user doesn't have enough reputation to post comments, they need to earn the ability to post comments by getting five upvotes on their answers. (Or, earn the right with ten upvotes on their questions, or a mix of the two)

Not having earned the right to post comments does not mean that one's comment-level posts are somehow valid answers. Please continue to flag answers that should be comments so moderators can convert them to comments. (It's a thing ♦s can do that other users cannot)

If a user has less than 50 reputation, it might not make sense to chastise them with a "this should be a comment" comment, as they can't post a comment. But please do flag it so that a ♦ moderator can convert to a comment. Alternatively, encourage the user to expand their answer so that it's worthy of your upvote, thus helping them gain reputation and helping the OP get a valid answer. (E.G: "This answer is more of a comment unless you can cite a source to support your claim that such-and-such...")