Let's justify the usefulness of the "very low quality" flag on answers

Question

I am evaluating the usefulness of the "very low quality" post flag.

from here I am assuming that

• It's not a flag to use to indicate the technical correctness of the answer.

• It's not a flag to use when an answer is not a real answer.

• It's not a flag to use when it's a link-only answer.

• It's not a flag to use when it's a spam.

• It confuses lots of new users who use it to indicate the correctness of the answer - which gives our busy moderators more work ( as those flags are rejected ).

It seems like the only reasons to use VLQ flag is when

• the answer is not understandable at all ( may be in a different language, or very very poor English )

• it's impossible to improve it through editing ( ie. answer makes no sense at all and guessing what the author meant to say would possibly introduce a radical change )

• as Jeff explains

Now, have I missed any important reason for having the VLQ flag on answers?

In my opinion, this reason for flagging is redundant because most of the time we can use either spam, not an answer, or custom flag.

I am not proposing a removal of it but rather like to hear your justification.

In case we decide the VLQ is redundant we can post a feature request asking to remove/replace it with another type of flag.

Please do not tag status-by-design as I am aware of that. My only intentions are to discuss this matter.

Answer 1

One of the reasons we're so strict about VLQ is that it's being used for Audits.

It's still useful to keep around for answers, but it has a very high threshold (as you point out) it has to meet to being marked 'helpful' by a moderator.

Should it be this way? Yes and no. We need a way to alert moderators to things that should just be deleted because they are unsalvagable. However, saying "Very Low Quality" seems to elicit confusion.

Perhaps changing "Very Low Quality" to:

Unsalvageable

This answer has severe formatting or content issues that can't be fixed by editing. It should be deleted.

Answer 2

I have a love-hate relationship with that flag, mostly hate. I rejoiced when Waffles got rid of it, and cried a bit inside when Jeff returned from vacation just to put it back. It is the single most ambiguous, broadly misused and pejoratively applied to indicate I don't like this because Tuesday flag that we have.

On the other hand, it does unearth some very smelly stuff that wasn't caught by any other flag, sometimes escaping down votes entirely. On answers, it's often used to point out things that should probably be marked as not an answer instead, but also:

dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd

and

testtesttesttesttesttesttest

and

The answer to this is pretty easy you jus

sometimes

u do dis easy bro. u opnz de file menu, den prpties den dere.

There's also the occasional dump of unformatted code without explanation, rant that tangentially addresses the question (or, at least mentions it) and other things.

I'm not opposed to renaming it, if someone can think of a better, less ambiguous and broad name to call it. We don't necessarily need very low quality for answers, but we need something like it, perhaps more reasonably scoped by definition.

When we say use it to indicate that you found toxic waste, we need to be able to better define toxic waste in the context of written language. That's .. always been a subjective call. What I can say is, the flag wasn't properly used unless the moderator that serviced it either removed the post on sight, or made a Herculean edit to salvage it.

Then I think of changing it to "Should be deleted, unsalvageable" because that's essentially what it means, but I cringe at the ramifications of doing that. Would be an interesting test to change it to that for half the people flagging, just to see what happens.

Answer 3

For me, as mod on some smaller sites, it helps raise visibility of some posts which need work. These may not be handled otherwise, so it gives me a heads up.

Often they are from new users, so I can also give them a welcome and explain the ground rules (as none of then read the FAQ before posting)

Answer 4

I think the biggest general-use case is for certain link-only answers that answer the question (as such are not "Not An Answer"), but aren't spam.

If VLQ didn't exist, you would have to use a custom mod flag, which would increase the workload for already overloaded mods.

Your assumption that it's not a flag to use when it's a link-only answer is incorrect. In fact, Shog suggested using it in the past for link-only answers.

Answer 5

I had an example just the other day of a user who posted all of their code in the question and answer as an image because they said they were having issues with the code formatting. For the question, I was able to clearly see the code and retype it but the answer was long enough that the image became squished making it unreadable.

In this case, the user did answer his own question (so not NAA) and it wasn't spam or needed specific mod attention so VLQ made the most sense. So even though a mod was the one to respond to the user it at least gave someone other than a mod a chance to address the answer instead of leaving it only mods.

Having said all of this, this might have been my first time every using this flag. But based on the description it probably shouldn't be used frequently anyway because we are usually able to edit answers into a better shape. So just because it doesn't get used all that often doesn't mean it doesn't have its use.