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I noticed some situations lately where answers which (in my opinion) where wrong, but nonetheless were upvoted by some guy - be it through insufficient knowledge, not reading properly or just giving an upvote because the answer appeared in the "first answer" tab and this is the easiest thing to earn a review (sadly, this case seems to happen quite often lately).

Now I can downvote the answer and comment on it. Nonetheless the person might not remove the answer because it's still a reputation win, even with 4 downvotes. With an even count of down- and upvotes (in most cases max. 1 upvote) the answer also might not even be noticed as bad answer, because it's still at score 0. Those answers can be dangerous to people who don't have the skills to judge all the answers.

In the moderator tools I can recommend a Deletion of such an answer.

Now outside the Tools I don't have this option. Also, I can't flag it because it I will get a declined - flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer.

Now what exactly am I supposed to do in such cases?

EDIT: I think an option is badly needed to recommend! (for users which don't have 20k rep) deletions outside the Tools section to raise the quality of the answers again - as far as I know recommeding deletions is a process which does not put additional work on the Moderators.

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  • Why...........? – Christoph Nov 7 '12 at 23:03
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    So if I understand this correctly, the gist of the problem is that someone else is upvoting crappy answers? There's nothing you or anyone else can do about that. Mods don't remove "bad" answers, only spam and non-answers. – Robert Harvey Nov 7 '12 at 23:05
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    What's wrong with leaving a comment that explains why this is a bad answer, and / or providing a better answer of your own? Moderators shouldn't be made to judge the technical viability of an answer. We're just here to take out the trash. – Brad Larson Nov 7 '12 at 23:07
  • To you both: I don't say that Moderators should do the work, there is an option missing to cope with such answers. – Christoph Nov 7 '12 at 23:09
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    I think the only way to fix this is to fix the review queue, and stop idiots upvoting crap. – Pëkka Nov 7 '12 at 23:09
  • @Brad as I told, of course you can do this, but it's another story if the answerer reacts to it and if the unexperienced user reads all those comments to an answer. – Christoph Nov 7 '12 at 23:13
  • OK, so the "feature request" here is to show the delete link in the review queue for those users who have vote to delete privileges, correct? – Robert Harvey Nov 7 '12 at 23:14
  • @Robert afaik, this option is present in the review queue. It should be available outside the review queue for each answer (probably with a comment option) so it appears in the low quality review stack. – Christoph Nov 7 '12 at 23:18
  • If you have vote to delete privileges, there is a delete link below every answer. Flagging will put it in the low quality review queue. – Robert Harvey Nov 7 '12 at 23:19
  • @RobertHarvey That's why i was talking about "Recommend Deletion" as it is present in the low quali review queue. – Christoph Nov 7 '12 at 23:20
  • You want to put that button on every answer? See here: meta.stackexchange.com/a/145292, and continue to flag for low quality. – Robert Harvey Nov 7 '12 at 23:21
  • I think this relates to my question earlier. Reviewing a first post that "seems good" vs "is correct". – Parris Nov 7 '12 at 23:36
  • I was about to post the same question, then I found this one. I found an answer, it wasn't accepted, but was few times upvoted. This answer indeed solved the by asker given example, but from what I could see, the asker had something else in mind. Anyways it could be dangerous if people relied on it as it was strictly one-sided solution, disallowing other than given input values. – Qwerty Mar 15 '13 at 14:11
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If you really want an answer deleted that badly because it's wrong, then what you can do is link the post in the appropriate chatroom (or otherwise bring more attention to it).

But be ready to make your case.

If you're successful, then a flood of downvotes will pour in. Once the answer reaches -3, it should send a strong signal to anyone seeing the answer. And if enough 20ks decide to delete it, then it's gone.

That said, this is obviously not scalable. But that is very likely intentional by-design because deletion should only done for the worst of harmful material.

This is actually not uncommon. In the C++ chatroom (and most likely others as well), we often link posts that we believe deserve more (up or down) votes. Likewise for close and delete votes.

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    +1 Awesome strategy, and great use of a chat room. – jmort253 Nov 8 '12 at 2:54
  • hm, this really sounds like a good idea! – Christoph Nov 8 '12 at 16:58
  • Yes, this is more common approach. (python chatroom) If a good answer appears, we appreciate it by sharing it there, or downwoting a bad one. – Qwerty Mar 15 '13 at 14:17
  • What about in this case where the accepted answer is blatantly wrong as it is stating it can't be done. stackoverflow.com/a/138181/268074 – Petah Nov 28 '13 at 0:16
  • @Petah Take a look at this meta post: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/145301/… In short, there's no easy way. The system is intentionally designed to keep a single person from being able to destroy content. (moderators exempt) – Mysticial Nov 28 '13 at 1:01

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