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We can read here that there is a minimal reputation to comment a post. But there is no minimal to post an answer!

I believe that an answer is more important than a comment.

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  • Related: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12119/…
    – Jake
    Jul 11, 2013 at 21:02
  • I suppose: New users can leave comments on their question and all its answers even with 1 rep Jul 11, 2013 at 21:42
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    My guess: Because an answer Only can bring the post to front roll screen, thereby corrected/flagged/monitored easily by community to earn more rep to reach 50 barrier. Basically New-users are encouraged to show off their skills to reach 50 rep barrier to comment Jul 11, 2013 at 22:08

1 Answer 1

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I admittedly have no idea why this actually is the case, but my guess would be that the reasoning might have gone something like the following:

commenting is perhaps more conducive to spam than is answering, and so we might want a user to demonstrate that they really intend to be part of the community before allowing them to comment wherever they please. Of course, hypothetically speaking, answers are equally good places to post spam (or irrelevant information that detracts from the purpose of the site). I would presume that the fact that answers can be downvoted and have an impact on reputation (and, in certain cases, the user's actual account privileges) is, at least theoretically, a preventative measure.

Of course, this is just speculation on my part. It's an interesting question.

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    High rep users can enforce deletion of questions pretty fast but they have to wait for the mod or even powers-that-be to handle the comment flags (guessing)
    – percusse
    Jul 11, 2013 at 21:16
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    @percusse: High rep users can edit questions without problems; but editing comments is left to the mods. Jul 12, 2013 at 22:22

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