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“Nonsense” is somewhere between “not an answer” and “spam”. It’s not spam. People flag it as both.

Can we have a “nonsense” flag reason, please? It would alleviate the (minor) confusion, and it could also get dealt with faster than “not an answer” or “other”.

e.g.

oranges oranges oranges oranges oranges hi

Apparently VLQ already covers this, though.

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  • 4
    Sounds like a good flag reason. But... my guess is it would become a new 'catch-all' flag. – Andrew Barber Oct 13 '13 at 19:47
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    I assume you have some samples answers in mind that would be tagged as such. Could you share some to see if @AndrewBarber has a point? – rene Oct 13 '13 at 19:48
  • I can see a whole lot of wrong answers being flagged with it. Do you have a particular flag description that might clarify this whole idea a bit more? – Bart Oct 13 '13 at 20:12
  • Specific examples of "nonsense" please – Shog9 Oct 13 '13 at 20:37
  • "oranges oranges oranges oranges oranges hi" could still sound like spam, though. ;-) – Jamal Oct 13 '13 at 20:53
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    @Jamal: That’s the confusion I was talking about! :) It’s not considered flaggable under “spam”, because it’s not promotional. (Although we’ll deal with it either way, of course.) – Ry- Oct 13 '13 at 21:37
  • @minitech: Well, if I see such a post and there's no "nonsense" flag, I'll just flag it as "spam" because it's clearly a blatant advertisement for oranges (and a really bad jingle at that). :-) – Jamal Oct 13 '13 at 21:42
  • Spam is defined as 'irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of recipients.' Pretty sure it doesn't have to be classified as a promotional in order to be considered spam, unless of course you are talking about 'a canned meat product made mainly from ham.' – Josh Crozier Oct 13 '13 at 23:37
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    @JoshC: I personally agree with that definition (and I like the priority that spam flags have too), but read the actual flag description. (And I’ll go look for the Meta answer that explaining that you should not flag nonsense as spam. Does the duplicate of this one count?) – Ry- Oct 13 '13 at 23:37
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    @JoshC: Ah, here we are. FAQ, too. – Ry- Oct 13 '13 at 23:40
  • @minitech Didn't notice that - great point. This leads me to think that the description needs to be changed to meet the more broad definition of spam then. This would obviously be going against this answer then.. meta.stackexchange.com/questions/58032/… – Josh Crozier Oct 13 '13 at 23:40
  • Else, the word spam shouldn't be used in the description, as that is a misrepresentation of the meaning of the word. – Josh Crozier Oct 13 '13 at 23:45
  • I see a very good case made in the dupe question for this. In that, there are multiple options which are valid to deal with such a post, which means voters flag for different reasons and so less likely to all match the same flag and thus auto remove doesn't occur (or less likely). Surely it's in Stack's interest to bridge the gap? Tho, I think a few of the flag wording/definitions could do with a revamp anyway... – James Oct 14 '13 at 0:10

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