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I've been declining a lot of flags about "not an answer" and wanted to ask a straw question to explain why. Pretend I just had my flag declined and am here to ask WTF!?

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If I understand you correctly, we should focus on improving (perceived) bad questions and answers with down votes instead of first resorting to flagging for e.g. as "not an answer"? – Global nomad Feb 28 at 6:52
@Globalnomad In many cases - yes. Answer down votes to cost you -1 so I understand if people refrain from that except for supremely poor examples of a post, but unuseful and vague / confusing questions can be voted without any reutation penalty. You can look at the mods as we regularly comment (hopefully in a constructive manner) on poor posts if you want to try your hand at that option. – bmike♦ Feb 28 at 14:13
@bmike will do. Thanks. As a newbie, I'm still learning the correct way (i.e. not one that leave mess for others to clean up) so any help is appreciated. – Global nomad Feb 28 at 15:16

1 Answer

up vote 8 down vote

I'm seeing a lot of "not an answer" flags when there are bad answers, answers that lack a reference, wrong answers, or answers that people disagree with.

Before handling a flag of "not an answer", I am pausing to look critically and assess the question. Since we want to optimize for questions that allow for (or perhaps even demand) good answers - I'm more interested in fixing the question if that's the real problem. Rather than delete an answer that points out the question needs help, let's use the tools to fix a question or guide someone that is attempting to move the discussion forward and only delete an answer if it truly is not of better quality than the question itself.

As moderators, we try to keep some order in terms of deleting things that are actually offensive, mean spirited or blatant spam (spam - n. advertising that is either repetitive or totally not relating to the question) . And we are also here to ensure that criticism of specific choices or functions is constructive as opposed to be unsubstantiated accusations or blowing off steam at someone else's expense, so be sure to use the correct flag if that's your primary complaint with a specific post.

Here's a great post that should be flagged as not an answer.

enter image description here

The only way that would be an answer is if someone asked an off-topic question and we would want a flag on the question since I can't really blame the answerer for a mis-placed question.

Here is what a moderator sees when declining a flag when "not an answer" is in play:

enter image description here

So, as you can see, *even if an answer is totally wrong, that's not enough for us to delete it. It has to be unsaveable by an edit and we like to see that the bad answer has a down vote or two and hopefully a constructive comment before we like to step in and summarily delete an answer. Even totally wrong answers with a polite, concrete rebuttal is of great use to the community.

Think how many people with a similar wrong answer in their mind could be helped if we kept all the wrong answers online, searchable, but properly down-voted and explained as to how and why the post is incorrect.

Since our site has so few trusted users, the reopen queue is not maintained well, and when a moderator deletes something, it's extremely rare that anyone will see it, let alone have a chance to fix it.

I've been sending detailed rejection messages in cases where I decline a flag and also wanted to post here. We need flagging, but I wanted to correct several instances of people flagging things due to an answer not being one they like or one that needs help. The next time you flag something as "not an answer" - do a check to see if it can instead be voted / commented if the poster has clearly tried to move the discussion forward. Not all answers are right from the get-go, but we need to give new users and the collaborative editing process a chance for some answers rather than just deleting them outright.

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Are these directly from flags or the review queues "Recommend for Deletion" ? – Mark Mar 1 at 10:10
This is from the combined flagging queue and not from any review queue. Now, the contrived example in the post would have shown up in the normal review queue since it was a first post by a new user and was so short as to be flagged for systematic review, but the point of the post was to address intentional flags for "not an answer" by site users. – bmike♦ Mar 1 at 13:05
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Must... resist... urge... to ironically flag this answer... – RLH Mar 12 at 16:13
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Performance art is tolerated much better on meta so why not scratch your flagging itch. – bmike♦ Mar 12 at 16:20
@bmike - should't that answer NOT be flagged as "not an answer" but as "spam" – Mark May 6 at 21:42
@mark Yes - spam is a subset of not an answer and depending on how often that poster is answering with the same item and whether they have disclosed their relationship with the product. It's more easy to delete these when it's truly not an answer, since that needs no other qualifiers that spam does have. Also, spam has additional sanctions to the poster whereas not an answer just gets deleted if it's not attempting to move the question forward with some relevant details. – bmike♦ May 6 at 21:45

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