/u/Ancienthistory has already linked to the Rules Roundtable, so I'll suggest some ways of making your AskHistorians experience better without an answered flair.

You could for example check out this sweet browser extension made by /u/Almost_useless. It should change the comment count to accurately reflect what's actually in there.

There's also this cool summary bot that lives in the Friday Free For All. Also made by a community member!

Want a small mountain of awesome answers to read through? Then check out the Sunday Digest. Every week there's a hundred or more great answers to read through. or if you want something delivered right to your screen every single day then check out our twitter!.

Fun fact, but I'm in the midst of typing up todays Digest and my early count showed 170+ threads just from this week. And that's before I do my in depth stalking additional research.

It has been a little while since we've touched on this, but for anyone that wants to know our general policy on "answered" flairs, please see Rules Roundtable #15 REDUX: Why don’t you have an ‘answered’ flair? [ANSWERED].

Them you'll just find 50 comments not labeled "acceptable flair" which, if you're really going to ignore them is exactly the same thing.

It sucks when there's 50 removed comments. I know it does. But there's not really a better option if we want the high quality answers that we get. It requires heavy moderation.