Low quality flag with bounty. Flag declined

Question

This 100 points bonty question was flagged with

no effort is shown at all

and declined

how can we other way make SO better?

I have downvoted this question, but cannot delete it.

Is this question really ok?

Answer 1

Brad Larson:

While not the best question in the world...
Two users left detailed and lengthy answers in response to the offered bounty, and to remove the potential of earning that would be unfair to those answerers.

So it's fine to advocate bad questions because they had a good answer? Or was it the bounty?

This is not the Stack way I always see, and in fact I have lost rep on SO, when a question was removed even though I placed a decent answer.

So is it a case of if there's a bounty you can get away with answering a poor question and gain some rep?
What about my answer on a poor question? It was my early days and so I've now learned not to answer poor questions, but perhaps it was a FANTASTIC answer, better than any other ever posted.
Was that evaluated in the close process? Could users not have seen my amazing answer and thought bounty or not, that should stay? I know the answer is no...

Or if there was a bounty on the question I answered, would I have instead gained rep?

Users simply shouldn't answer on a poor question, bounty or not. They should instead flag it, or edit it, or downvote and ignore it.

I know bounties are precious but they shouldn't be allowed to be used to circumvent posting a rubbish question.
Closing it down and the answerers losing their time will teach them not to post on poor questions and instead spend that time voting to close or perhaps editing the question.

Ideally, they'd have edited the question and then posted an answer...

@MikroDel As for why your flag was denied, maybe if a bit more info was provided, as Bart said, and thus you provide a more solid and viable case for it being closed it might have been reviewed differently.
Although maybe not in this case and the mod who denied your flag accepted the question was not great.

I see the reasons for leaving this one open, truly, but I think it would still have been fair to close it as many other people lose rep when answering bad questions that are closed.

Answer 2

I agree, not a great question. And I would normally have voted to close it as well. But your flag does not give a moderator a lot to go one. "So it shows no effort? Well, then vote accordingly".

If you're going to use a custom flag, be clear. State what the problem is, state what you want to happen and why a moderator will have to step in. Something along the lines of:

This question shows no effort on behalf of the OP, and really needs to be closed. It seems it has escaped the attention of the community, and now has a bounty on it, preventing closure. Perhaps this can be refunded, and the question closed?

Then you're clear, and a moderator does not have to guess or research. It's no guarantee for success (perhaps the moderator had other reasons to decline, the fact that it attracted answers for example), but less likely to be declined for it being unclear.

Answer 3

I declined that flag. While not the best question in the world, I saw no need for a moderator to step in and manually refund the bounty there.

Two users left detailed and lengthy answers in response to the offered bounty, and to remove the potential of earning that would be unfair to those answerers.

As far as the question goes, I could see this being significantly improved with an edit. As the answers indicate, I think it could be something of interest to future visitors. Not all short questions are terrible.

Others have commented on this, but you went through and flagged 7 other question with "no effort is shown at all", which doesn't provide us much to go on. These look like flags asking us to close questions, which we prefer to go through the close vote queue. You didn't indicate for any of these (which were all bountied questions) why we should step in and manually refund the bounty.