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Suppose I see a bad question or a bad answer. Instead of outrightly flagging it or down voting it, is it fine to comment in the question or answer to the asker or answerer to remove it?

I ask this because sometimes the asker or answerer might have a tiny reputation but at the same time might have a good knowledge. But since he/she might be new to the community, he/she might not have known all the regulations of AU and so down voting the question or answer (and subsequent loss of reputation) he/she has posted might not encourage that he/she to continue in the site.

Thus in an attempt to serve our community by flagging or down voting one bad question/answer we might cause a heavy loss to the community by losing a user who might in future prove very useful to it. Therefore, is it fine to comment to an answerer or asker to remove his answer or question?

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    If you can ask for edit to the post instead of deleting it, it would be better though. If I'm not mistaken, deleting several of your answers/questions has a penalty which suspends your account for a short time.
    – Dan
    Commented Apr 11, 2014 at 10:10
  • @Dan If you want add your comment more elaborately as a separate answer or try incorporating it with Danatela's answer below.
    – Venkatesh
    Commented Apr 11, 2014 at 10:13
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    I'm not 100% sure of the suspension part, which is why I didn't add as an answer. Unless someone else can confirm it, I don't think it's worth adding it as an asnwer.
    – Dan
    Commented Apr 11, 2014 at 10:25
  • @Dan It isn't a suspension per se, but there are automatic question and answer bans in place for those that continually post low quality content.
    – Seth Mod
    Commented Apr 11, 2014 at 14:28

2 Answers 2

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Yes, it is good idea. Why not? If the person cares about being useful he will either delete it or improve it. You can also flag the question/answer for being low quality so the reviewers will leave the proper comment.

The downside of it it is only it is the time-consuming operation. You may find out sometimes a lot of posts are incomplete/wrong so taking care about all of them is hard. Sometimes just downvote is enough. You have the choice to leave the comment or not. And unless you were wrong in several times you will not get message from moderators or those you are trying to help (you are trying to help them, right?).

Also, there is a script that saves me a much time leaving comments.

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If I remember well, my very first answer on Askubuntu was removed, and it is not too long ago. I didn't like it, but it drew my attention and made me curious to the general idea of the site.

Although flagging a post may be often followed by removing the post, flagging is not request to remove it, at least that is not my intention. If I have the feeling a post is bad but "can be saved", I leave a comment. I noticed in many cases the post stays for a while, giving the poster the opportunity to act, even is the flag is marked "helpful". I think that is the right procedure to prevent being rude.

So in my opinion, yes, if you feel the post is sincere, which it is in many cases, you can very well leave a comment, but you should still flag it (with care), if it is a bad one. The moderators take care of the policy what to do whith it.

If you don't flag a bad post, who is looking after what is happening with it?

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