2

I have recently noticed that you are unable to flag up answers as "very low quality" if they are in the positive for votes (1 or above). Now I can see why this is in place, however I believe that this policy should be reviewed, because for instance, today I came across this answer that had 2 upvotes, I gave it a downvote because it was a link-only answer, however I could not flag it up as "very low quality", even though it matches the criteria, simply because it is in the positive for votes:

enter image description here

So I think that a good solution for this issue would be if users, say, at 2k+ (as that is the rep level at which you get access to the "very low quality" review queue) would be granted the ability to flag up answers as "very low quality" which have less than 10 upvotes.

3 Answers 3

4

All >20K users have access to moderation tools and can vote to delete questions (or if really bad I think -3 or -5 we can immediately delete them)

In this case, read all the comments as it's being handled without needing a feature request.

Sometimes just contacting the OP is good enough...

:P

2
  • The answer is unedited (though the other answer has now been accepted) but since that link is dated 2008 and it's still working, I think the answer should be left as-is unless the link actually breaks.
    – Wildcard
    Oct 14, 2015 at 0:53
  • @Wildcard: when the link breaks, it's too late... :-(
    – Fabby
    Oct 14, 2015 at 21:29
4

I disagree.

Flagging as "very low quality" implies recommending the deletion of the post.

For an answer to go into the Very Low Quality queue, not only is needed a "very low quality" flag be casted on the answer, but also a "not an answer" flag be casted on an answer.

This gives an insight on how (rightfully I'd say) the system cares about not deleting potentially useful content.

If a post is upvoted, it's very unlikely that it could be bad enough to be deleted.

Nevertheless if a post really needs deletion you still the have the "in need of moderator intervention" flag.

So no, I don't think we need to enlarge the Very Low Quality queue with posts that in 99% of the cases won't need deletion.

2
  • Very good answer, I agree 100%. (although afaik one VLQ flag will put a post in the LQ queue, no NAA flag required)
    – Seth
    Oct 10, 2015 at 2:17
  • @Seth For answers it seems like both are needed, questions instead seem to require a single VLQ: meta.stackexchange.com/a/5222/302251 (point 12)
    – kos
    Oct 10, 2015 at 5:58
4

My opinion, if you REALLY wanted to flag that as low quality, you could just use a custom reason and put "Link only answer".

I'd drop a comment first though, saying something like "Link only answers are discouraged. Can you please post some of the content here?" and link to the post on MSO about link-rot.

You must log in to answer this question.