1

I looked at this other question: How to improve low quality answers consisting of only a code block?, which answers a lot of my questions about low quality answers.

This is a simple one, or maybe two, not sure, basically: If there is a low quality answer that's not completely useless; I feel it could be made worthy by editing, but I am personally not qualified to make that edit myself (e.g. language or module I don't know), I'd like to leave a comment stating what they need to do. Should I Skip, Looks OK, or Recommend Deletion?

Choices:

  • Skip. Pass on to some other reviewer. Given the spate of robo-reviewers lately, the chances that this is someone is going to give it a better review may not be that great. But, ideally, someone else who knows the language could do a better edit.
  • Leave comment + Looks OK. The comment tells the original answerer how to improve it. But they may not bother, and there's no mechanism (afaik) to send it back to the review queue if they don't.
  • Leave comment + Recommend deletion. Seems unfair, but is this the right answer? Then, if they do edit it, it comes back? Do these get auto-downvoted if I do this?
  • Leave comment + Downvote + One of the above. Also seems unfair; if they do improve it, there's not much chance they will recover from the downvotes though.

One case where this is true is where an answer consists of only a code block. In some cases I let these go, but most of the time they should get improved with an answer. If I know the language, I could add an explanation (that seems to be appropriate from what I've read... i'm always hesitant to edit other people's answers in substantive ways, but it seems SO doesn't mind that).

But sometimes I don't know the language, and it's not obvious what the code block's relation to the original answer is. I could skip it and pass it on to another reviewer who is more familiar with the language. But, it seems like the right thing is to add a comment to notify the original answerer, and then . This last part is what I'm not sure about.

Improve this question
6
  • 3
    Answering your title only: Improve it, of course. And click "looks good" as soon as you finish.
    – Mołot
    Commented Feb 27, 2014 at 14:20
  • 1
    You want to click "Done", not "Looks Good", after improving it.
    – Wooble
    Commented Feb 27, 2014 at 14:24
  • you are asking for a lot of things all together, maybe you could change our question to be cleaner..
    – Revious
    Commented Feb 27, 2014 at 14:30
  • @Wooble That would be an option in first/last posts, not the VLQ queue.
    – Servy
    Commented Feb 27, 2014 at 14:33
  • @Molot - The question here specifically is about if I know how the post could be improved (i.e. adding explanation to code block), but am not personally qualified to do that improvement myself (e.g. code block is about some language or module I don't know). I leave a comment, and then what action do I take? I will pare the question down to make this more clear.
    – Corley Brigman
    Commented Feb 27, 2014 at 14:37
  • If it doesn't look good, but there's nothing you can do yourself to fix it, Skip it and let someone else handle it?
    – Wooble
    Commented Feb 27, 2014 at 14:44

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
3

First off, "looks good" doesn't mean that it's a good post. Rather it means something more like, "This post isn't so awful that we need to delete it. It meets the site's minimum standards, even if it's not great." It also doesn't do anything. it doesn't automatically upvote the post, it doesn't revert a downvote, or undo an edit, or remove a comment. The only real action taken is to remove it from the VLQ queue (which is the only way it's different from "skip").

If you can see edits that would improve the post, by all means go and make them. (Although I wouldn't bother if, even after your edits, you feel the post should be deleted, as then you're just wasting your time.)

If you can think of any comments that would help the author improve the post, go ahead and leave them.

If you would like to vote on the post, feel free to.

As for which of the review actions you feel should be taken, it comes down to one simple question, "Do you think the post is so bad that it needs to be deleted?"

If the answer is "yes", recommend deletion.

If the answer is "no", say that it looks good.

If you just aren't sure, press skip.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .