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I just discovered those crazy review queues that everyone keeps talking about and holy crap! They add a whole new level of addiction engagement to this thing.

One worrying trend I'm seeing, however, is that answers flagged "not an answer" (which often contain useful information and should be converted into comments) are automatically made eligible for instant deletion in the review queue.

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That's insane. It gives zealous users only one option to deal with the problem on the spot - and often enough it isn't the right option. Mods were given the ability to convert non-answers into comments because they can contain valuable information, right? Review queue users are not given that possibility, and will be biased towards choosing deletion instead. I'm pretty sure that's how stuff like this answer deletion happened.

Please either remove the "delete answer" button from this context, or add a "convert to comment" button to match it.

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    +1. While that can be done with a flag (using the "flag or disagree..." button), some users with review privileges might not be aware of that - great idea.
    – Ken White
    Commented Dec 19, 2013 at 3:27
  • As Ken said, if you flag with an "other" flag and indicate that this answer still adds value, but should be a comment, that flag should stick around for us to see it even if the answer is deleted by community members. That's not a long-term solution, but it's what can be done for now if you see something like this.
    – Brad Larson Mod
    Commented Dec 19, 2013 at 15:29
  • @Brad that's good to know. Will you honour the request if the answer has been deleted in the meantime though?
    – Pekka
    Commented Dec 19, 2013 at 15:31
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    @Pëkka - Yeah, I usually undelete the answer, then convert it to a comment from there or edit it to remove the part that caused people to think it was a non-answer. Of course, that assumes that it really was worthy of being converted to a comment (things like "me too" or "how did you do this?" are generally removed without conversion).
    – Brad Larson Mod
    Commented Dec 19, 2013 at 15:32
  • @Brad cool. Yeah, there's plenty of stuff where "delete" really is the way to go. But knowing our community (and I'm not excluding myself), when you present us a "delete" button as the only straightforward option, there's a great danger that everything is going into the grinder.
    – Pekka
    Commented Dec 19, 2013 at 15:34
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    Also, this might be a little more of a problem right now, due to the fact that a lot of 10k users are throwing in indiscriminate pile-on flags due to the Winterbash hats. We had three answers in the last couple of days that racked up over 40 flags from people gaming the one hat.
    – Brad Larson Mod
    Commented Dec 19, 2013 at 15:35
  • Oh maaan. Some people need to be slapped.
    – Pekka
    Commented Dec 19, 2013 at 15:36
  • The 10k flag queue has been ridiculous since the start of hat season.
    – Taryn
    Commented Dec 19, 2013 at 16:11
  • See related feature request meta.stackexchange.com/questions/143961/…
    – Michael Freidgeim
    Commented Oct 14, 2018 at 22:48

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