My Spam flag was declined... What's the tipping point for spam?

Question

I flagged an answer on this SO question as spam:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18350304/how-to-convert-rdl-file-into-pdf-using-ssrs/

Since the answer is deleted, here's its content (with the link made inactive):

I don't have a lot of experience on printing SSRS through code, but it looks like you can try the following: http://www.buzzfeed.com/readcommentbackwards/42-clever-food-hacks-that-will-change-your-life-dmjk

I didn't use Not an Answer as I tend to think those should be used for users who interact with the question in an honest attempt to participate but just get things wrong, e.g. comment as an answer.

To me, spam means that as well as not answering the question there is some sort of irrelevant external link, i.e. the situation here.

This answer from a moderator on MSO has some relevant info:

Flagged answer as spam; it was deleted; flag was declined

I declined the spam flag because it wasn't pure spam... (snip) We want people to be careful with spam / offensive flags, because of the significant penalties they carry, so we tend to decline spam flags where there's no obvious product or service promotion (or other abuse, like dumping dozens of links to a site).

OK, fair enough, on the face of it there is probably no commercial intent here, but Not an Answer also doesn't seem quite enough here either. So maybe Other would have been appropriate?

I suppose I'm also sad to get my first declined flag, but I'm sure I can just chalk that up as part of life's rich tapestry.

TL;DR

I flagged an answer that seemed pretty spammy to me as such, but this was declined - would NAA have been the best option here?

The answer has no business being on Stack Overflow, so I suspect the increased visibility from this question will get it nuked in a few seconds, but I'm just trying to understand the best course of action.

Just to emphasise - the link is nothing to do with programming - it's tips about cooking, basically.

Update

As expected the answer is now long gone, and apparently the consensus is that this was spam, judging by this comment from @H2CO3:

I have flagged it as spam and voted for deletion. (In the meantime, it has been deleted because apparently I was the 3rd one voting for deletion, and my spam flag has also been registered as "helpful".)

I assume enough people flagged it as spam that it was automatically deleted and the flags automatically approved.

I'd still love to hear from a mod to get an official opinion on this to see if this differs from community opinion, plus an idea of what (if anything) will happen to my original declined flag now since other spam flags have been accepted.

Update 2

Thanks for all the different opinions, many good points on both sides and I learnt a bit about the whole process. Upvotes for everybody!

In the meantime, I'm off to bake some eggs to go with my bacon tacos. Yum!

Answer 1

I declined the original flag as I didn't think that the link was spam. However, I see now that I should have just deleted the post which would have accepted your flag.

I will admit that I didn't read the link as carefully as I should have done as I didn't notice that it was a link to a completely irrelevant page. At the time I thought that it was just a link only answer which should be dealt with by edits, comments and/or down-votes, not flagging as spam.

One thing to bear in mind is that there has apparently been an uptick in the number of people misusing the spam and (particularly) the offensive flags to apparently flag things that should just be down-voted. Because of this I have being trying to evaluate the flags more carefully - however, this time I got it wrong.

On the more general point, I wouldn't worry about the odd flag that's declined. It's only when you have lots of declined flags that you have to consider that you are doing it wrong.

Answer 2

This answer was not ok, I agree with you. Spam flag is directed to posts with "advertisement or commercial" links or content inside the post.

This link has title of "35 Clever Food Hacks That Will Change Your Life", this is also the content of that long page. There is no content in it about the question How to convert RDL file into PDF using SSRS.

I think it should be marked as spam.

Answer 3

Yes, it is indeed spam. It has nothing to do with the topic of SO, let alone the question. It's just a link which serves as advertisement. I have flagged it as spam and voted for deletion. (In the meantime, it has been deleted because apparently I was the 3rd one voting for deletion, and my spam flag has also been registered as "helpful".)

Answer 4

I agree with the declined flag. I don't think it should have been marked as spam.

The answer is puzzling in that the link is entirely irrelevant but I suspect that they may have simply made a mistake and pasted a different link in to the one they had intended.

In this case I would give the benefit of the doubt rather than applying the 100 rep penalty for spam content. The user has made sensible contributions before and also it seems to be stretching the definition of spam that any irrelevant link should be automatically regarded as an advertisement.

If there was any good reason for believing that the answerer was affiliated with BuzzFeed or was planting the link for personal gain then a spam flag would be justified however.