When a new member tries to write a comment he sees “add comment (requires 50 reputation)” but of course he has no so many points. On the other hand, answering does not require any reputation. Then the only option is to mask the comment as an answer, but it may look silly. I think this is not the right policy, as new members may be discouraged to contribute to the discussions, even if they have some interesting and valuable remarks.

(By the way, the same situation is in math.stackexchange.)