I was recently very surprised about the expected workflow for low-quality posts when stumbling across the Meta Post Am I reviewing correctly?.
It would be nice if the guidelines, as discussed in other Meta Questions or the Community FAQ, were more readily apparent to people starting out on review queues.
I think the help text, space-constrained though it may be, does a poor job of reflecting those standards.
Here is the current help text:
This answer was flagged as low-quality because of its length and content.
- Looks OK if nothing is wrong with this answer
- Edit if you can fix all the problems with this answer
- Recommend Deletion to recommend that this answer be deleted
- Skip if you are not sure and want to go to the next item
You can also leave a comment on the answer, but you will still need to choose one of the above actions to clear the post from the review queue.
Here are a couple fairly easy suggestions:
Add a link to the relevant community FAQ on reviewing guidelines for that particular review type when someone clicks on more info. This could easily be added to all review queues. A non-trivial number of people will read them and be much better informed before reviewing than they otherwise would have been.
Improve Action Descriptions. The biggest surprise was that Recommend Deletion is akin to flagging, rather than merely not looking OK. Right now the explanation for Recommend Deletion is just tautological filler. It doesn’t help my understanding of Recommend Deletion to know that clicking it will “recommend that this answer be deleted”. Instead, why not use the same format as every other action help text: “[action] if [condition]”?
- Recommend Deletion if the answer is blatantly bad
Other word choices I'm not crazy about:
- Can you only click Edit if you can fix “all” the problems with an answer?
- Can you only click Looks Good if there is “nothing” wrong with the answer?
Here’s an example of an updated help blurb:
This answer was flagged as low-quality because of its length and content.
- Looks OK if the answer meets our quality standards
- Edit if you can improve the quality of this answer
- Recommend Deletion if the answer is blatantly bad
- Skip if you are not sure and want to go to the next item
You can also leave a comment on the answer, but you will still need to choose one of the above actions to clear the post from the review queue. Review Guidelines »