Discouraging frivolous close voting by adding a small cost like downvotes on answers

[luap42]

PSA: Please don’t discuss here, how comments containing answers should be handled. Use that thread for this discussion:

What should be done about answers posted as comments?

This got me thinking. I agree with the addition of an “Answer in Comments” flag, but I disagree with deleting the comment and the user losing something as a direct result of the flag. If enough people cast this flag on a comment, then we know this comment is being considered as an answer. So why not just convert the comment to an answer? This then opens up the “comment”/“answer” to community voting, where it should be able to sort itself out if it is a rather poor answer. One downside that I …