


The answer had one upvote yesterday, I spotted it and downvoted it as it is incorrect and misleading. What worries me most is the one upvote it had, because that means that at least one person thought that it actually was correct.

I raised a custom flag on that answer, saying:

This answer is at worst simply wrong and misinformation, and at best not what the OP asked for. I understand that normally such answers should be downvoted, but this is an old question and thus may not receive much vote attention. It already had one upvote on it, which I cancelled, but it means that someone may have thought that this answer was correct.

However that flag got declined with the message:


Second example

Then on another answer I had the similar thing happen, it was about:


This answer is also total nonsense, and moreover the question is protected, and this nonsense answer came from a very low rep user.
My custom flag on this was also declined for the same reasons.

My confusion

I always thought that protecting questions was done to prevent nonsense answers and that all nonsense answers should be cleaned up.
I understand that normally this should be done by the community and at five downvotes it will be half grayed out, however as these are old questions, this is not an option anymore.
Since yesterday the amount of votes on those answers has neither changed.

How should I deal with such cases in the feature to ensure that nonsense answers stay away from here?

fyi - answers are grayed out at a -3 net score (not -5) –  psubsee2003 Apr 20 at 16:37
Fundamentally, the most meaningful thing to do with a technically incorrect answer is to leave a comment explaining exactly what is wrong with it. –  Chris Stratton Apr 20 at 18:24
You should leave a comment explaining why the answer is wrong, and if you have a better answer, you should post it as well. –  superluminary May 8 at 11:29

2 Answers 2

up vote 47 down vote accepted

This question is actually a dupe, but since the split, the original is now on meta.SE.

When flagging an incorrect answer...

Your flag is the equivalent of calling a Janitor to tell them your Calculus instructor isn't teaching derivatives correctly.

Mods are here to sweep the floors and break up fights, not to judge the technical validity of an answer and delete it if it doesn't match a certain (arbitrary) level of correctness. That is the duty of the community, which can downvote and vote to delete incorrect or generally awful answers.

Because we split, we get to reformulate the answers. –  Martijn Pieters Apr 20 at 17:19
This answer is janitor-approved. –  Robert Harvey Apr 21 at 21:32
I like Mods are here to sweep the floors –  Satpal Apr 22 at 12:33

You should:

  • downvote (as you did)
  • leave a comment under the answer to inform the poster and other passersby on its inaccuries
  • enter a suitable chatroom to ask if people can have look at that answer
  • post on meta to get the reasoning of a wider range of community members on the issue

Answers with enough (down)votes can be deleted:

  • by 3 trusted users (that is users with 20K reputation)
  • by 6 users having 2K via the low quality queue

Only use other flags for things that can not be handled by the community itself.

First of all, I do not propose to give the moderators extra unnecessary tasks. But why should I be the one doing all those things when I have identified such an answer and want to undertake an action (few mouse clicks) on it? Is there no other way to notify the community about such answers to collect downvotes? –  skiwi Apr 20 at 16:41
Moreover, is it suitable to make a post on meta about a single answer, with only as purpose to get rid of it by means of the community? –  skiwi Apr 20 at 16:43
I would think we have enough bells and whistles to get peoples attention... –  rene Apr 20 at 16:46
since recently, many answers can also be deleted by 6 users having 2K rep, via low quality queue –  gnat Apr 20 at 19:17
@gnat Thank for pointing that out. I edited that into my answer. –  rene Apr 20 at 19:46
AFAIK, trusted user delete votes are not authoritative like those of diamond moderators. Either that or I'm not trusted. My delete votes end up in the queue for voting by others. There might be fewer downvotes needed — but a single user can't delete an answer unless they're a diamond moderator. –  Jonathan Leffler Apr 20 at 20:30

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