Is the comment-only answer acceptable?

Question

I've just read a post that's really mundane. It's one of those "just read the error message" type questions. There's an obvious, correct, and incredibly trivial answer I can respond with; but I'm not sure the original post is high-quality enough to deserve a full post in reply. So...

Is the comment-only answer ever constructive?

If yes, under what circumstances should it be used?

Prior related discussion in the meta

Answer 1

No

• Questions that are trivial enough to be answered in this way are too simple for dba.se and should be closed.
• If it does warrant a full answer, posting the answer as a comment makes the solution less discoverable for future visitors.
• Comment-answers make life harder for people trying to use comments for their intended purposes.
• Answering a "poor" question in a comment encourages another poor question instead of improving the current one. After all, it worked!
• Answering in a comment misleads new users into thinking it's OK to do that in general.
• Comments only support upvotes, which award no reputation. The only way to point out an incorrect comment-answer is to add another comment.
• Comments can't be improved by others (e.g. to add detail or maintain information over time). Comments can only be edited by the original author for a short time (currently 5 minutes).
• Comments have no public revision history (like answers do).
• Comment answers may dissuade others from writing a more detailed answer along the same lines.
• Comments are more easily deleted than answers.

Answer 2

Yes

• If it's a good enough question, Paul White's comment sock (or some other good samaritan) will convert it to an answer at some point anyway.
• It makes it easier to delete the question in the future if it's deemed to be clutter.
• We don't alienate a new user. They still get an answer and a chance to reply asking for further help. ^{They can always learn more about the site by self-posting an answer as well!}