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Since everything I list below could be acceptable when there is so much to discuss, is there an accepted etiquette to what "answers" should address in relation to app "questions"? It looks like "answers" (and comments) to app postings fall into a myriad of categories.

It may be worthwhile to outline this a little better to help direct the parts of the discussion that are best left as comments and those that deserve to be left as answers. As it is, all of these tend to show up in both locations. Of course, since apps are slightly wedged into the concept of a question, it only follows that the answers may not need to be under any sort of suggested restrictions.

One potential is to suggest general feedback (e.g., "Awesome tool!") would be best for comments while things that may require some back-and-forth should all be fair game for "answers". Unfortunately, directing any type of response to one location or the other will likely result in distractions to the overall system.

Bug reports as answers can linger on well after they are resolved, detracting from any current discussion. Complex bug reports as comments can bulk up quickly as details are worked out. Without knowing the system behind the popularity, one could add to your own app as a "answer" with updates and samples (vs. edits to the original question) to keep it higher on the list.

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Since we're approaching feature freeze on V2.0, I guess it's time to lay down some guidelines here.

Henceforth on , , or posts

Comments

should be used for

  • general feedback
  • feature requests
  • "bite sized" bug reports (it's down, doesn't work on XP, etc.; anything that doesn't need much context or is trivial to reproduce)

Answers

should be used for

  • detailed bug reports
    • comments on bug reports can serve any discussion needed to reproduce them

Edits on the Question

should be used for

  • samples
  • project updates

Any more detailed discussion should be taken off of Stack Apps, perhaps to an app specific chat room, mailing list, project issue tracker, or what have you.

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    Given that answers are only for bug reports, would it be possible to change the answer button to bug report on only the app, library and script tags? This would make it very clear
    – Jonathan.
    Feb 2, 2012 at 22:54

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