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When reviewing possibly low quality posts you sometimes see OK answers, except that they're wrong. From the review interface you can't downvote so you can only comment or edit, and editing isn't really an option when the intended answer is wrong.

Once you've commented or upped an existing comment, should we then click Looks Good because there's nothing wrong with the answer, except that it's wrong, or Not Sure so that the answer is reviewed again (and again)?

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4 Answers 4

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+50

Update: we went with "Looks OK". Slightly less of an endorsement than "Looks Good", but hopefully still enough of a barrier to conscientious folk clicking it with abandon to allow cruft to get deleted.

Remember: an awful lot of what goes into that queue actually does need to be removed; it's important that folks feel a little bit uneasy if they click "Looks..." on a really crappy-looking post.


So I'm tired of the confusion and complaints about the text on this button. "Looks Good" makes sense to me, because... Well, I want stuff that doesn't look good deleted!

...But me understanding something isn't a good excuse for text that confuses other people. So, here are a few other suggestions:

  • Looks OK
  • Looks Acceptable
  • Looks Reasonable
  • Looks Appropriate
  • Not Awful

Are any of these less confusing than "Looks Good"?

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  • 9
    Yes, IMO, any of them. As one more option, may I suggest just "Keep", to go with the other possible actions ("Edit" and "Close" / "Delete"). Commented May 29, 2014 at 0:10
  • 4
    This clearly calls for an A/B test where you use those randomly and see which ones are more likely to lead to deletion.
    – user213963
    Commented May 29, 2014 at 1:49
  • 5
    "Not Awful" seems consistent with your stated description of what LQ flags are for ("steaming cowpiles", if I recall correctly). "Looks good" is one of the main reasons I avoided this queue for a long time. Commented May 29, 2014 at 2:34
  • 3
    "Looks like an answer" Commented May 29, 2014 at 4:48
  • 15
    "Meh" - If ever there was a place to finally put a "Meh" button, this is it. (only half joking here)
    – user50049
    Commented May 29, 2014 at 12:33
  • 7
    "Don't Delete" would be less confusing... unless you really want deletion of anything that doesn't qualify as looking good
    – gnat
    Commented May 29, 2014 at 15:12
  • ...complemented by "Don't Close" or (deja vu) "Leave Open" for question reviews
    – gnat
    Commented May 29, 2014 at 17:30
  • 1
    @gnat "Don't Delete" sounds perfect, very often the post looks terrible, but apparently not so terrible as to warrant deletion...
    – apaul
    Commented Jun 3, 2014 at 22:51
  • Build number???
    – Braiam
    Commented Jun 3, 2014 at 23:35
  • What do I look like, a dev? I announce things after they're actually available.
    – Shog9
    Commented Jun 3, 2014 at 23:35
  • ... it's already available, @Braiam. At least on SO.
    – hichris123
    Commented Jun 3, 2014 at 23:36
  • 1
    "Don't delete" ignores the presence of Edit, @apaul. If it looks terrible (no hyperbole), then you should probably either edit it or delete it.
    – Shog9
    Commented Jun 3, 2014 at 23:37
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    Shall I report a bug for the review history not matching up with the action taken? (it still shows 'looks good' in stackoverflow.com/review/low-quality-posts/history.)
    – hichris123
    Commented Jun 3, 2014 at 23:37
  • Go ahead, @hichris123
    – Shog9
    Commented Jun 4, 2014 at 1:15
  • Merriam-Webster suggests that OK is indeed... OK in this context: "not very good or very bad / acceptable or agreeable". I still can't figure how "Don't delete" ignores the presence of Edit, but this would probably better be addressed per separate discussion
    – gnat
    Commented Jun 4, 2014 at 8:54
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I agree with @Laura and would be happy with her suggestions. Here are three more:

  1. Meets standards (or even "Meets minimal requirements" or "basic expectations" if not too long)
  2. Should stay
  3. Don't remove (or "Don't delete")

Any kind of evaluative word like "good" or "OK" doesn't make intuitive sense when there's plainly incorrect information and a ton of downvotes. Yet the VLQ flag is not for deleting wrong or unpopular answers. I've got my share of declined and disputed flags because of the often blurry line between crappy writing and being reasonably clear in giving false or undesirable answers. I can only imagine how many cases of inappropriate VLQ flags the moderators or high-rep SO users see per day...

Even now that I understand the appropriate use of VLQ flags (I guess...I kinda disagree with the policy TBH), I still feel obligated to explain when I'm voting Looks good on a post that looks bad, but isn't bad in the ways that deserve deletion according to SE standards (e.g.). Yes, commenting is a good thing, and maybe SE wants us to feel that cognitive dissonance that makes conscientious folk like me comment to explain our Looks good votes when the post really doesn't look good or even OK...

But we're not all conscientious folk. We don't all read Meta before diving into the Low Quality Posts review queue. Some of us would probably prefer to choose an inappropriate close reason rather than Looks good or Skip, let alone "waste precious time time dignifying a bad answer with a comment" (written to be extra-haughty; not representative of my attitude toward the job).

Give us something easier to stomach clicking even when a post is wrong or disagreeable – and therefore deserves a downvote, not deletion (or so our policy says, anyway) – and I bet you'll get better reviewing and flagging behavior, more appropriate meta-questions about how to do both, and more attention for those meta-questions.

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5
+100

I think we actually should probably change it even more than what Shog suggests.

The purpose of the button is to either say "this question doesn't need me to do anything" OR "I did a thing, and now I'm finished with this question."

Why not change that button to "I'm Done" or "No Further Action Needed"? (Note that "I'm Done", while preferable for its brevity, might actually be a different kind of confusing...some people might interpret it as "I'm done reviewing" and think that they'll exit the review queue if they click it.)

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This answer is strongly in line with Nick Stauner’s and Laura’s, but I want to give the following argument that I believe to be straight to the point:

The main decision that reviewers in the low-quality queue have to make is not about quality, but on the correct placement of content. Therefore any naming of that button that somehow suggests something about the quality of posts is inherently flawed.

In some more detail:

Certainly, improving the quality of posts is one of the purposes of the low-quality queue. However, the first decision a reviewer must make is whether a post should stay at all, i.e., whether there is any point to improving it. After all, many posts in the low-quality queue are spam, closeworthy questions, not-an-answers, comments posted as answers, questions posted as answers and similar. Also keep in mind that posts receiving not-an-answer flags are sent to this queue.

Therefore clicking looks OK basically means that:

  • An answer really is an honest attempt to answer the question.
  • A question is a valid question for this site (and should not be closed).
  • I cannot improve that post any further.
  • The post is understandable.

Only the last two points are somewhat correlated with the overall quality of that post but only that: correlated. Therefore it can very well be that I decide that a post looks OK which has a much lower overall quality than the next post for which I recommend deletion, e.g., because it is just a misplaced answer. Or, more abstractly: The quality distributions of posts that should pass the low-quality queue and those that should fail it strongly overlap.

However, as long as that button is named anything like Looks OK, Not Awful or Meh, this implies that clicking this button asserts that a post has passed some quality threshold. And this leads to incorrect reviews, frustrated users, in particular new ones (see my last section in this answer) and dispute.

Finally, I would like to remark that the current naming of that button would only be half as bad if the corresponding help text would be more accurate – see Improve low-quality-post-queue help text.

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