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I recently flagged some positively-scored answers that weren't answers by our local policy for that kind of question.

All reviews are completed by now, but regardless of the reviewers' votes, nothing has happened.

This review, for instance, had the unanimous decision to delete the answer. My flag was marked as helpful, but the answer was not deleted.

This is not a duplicate of this question because there the answerer undeleted the answer after it was deleted from review. This has not happened here, the answer was never deleted.

Since I couldn't find anything else stating that this is intended behaviour, I believe this is a bug.

Or, if this is intended behaviour, what's the point of sending answers with positive score into the LQ review at all?

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This is certainly intended behaviour, but there is something else going on that isn't visible to you.

Note that regular users cannot directly delete positively scored answers: see the deletion faq. Since that answer has a score of 2 (currently), there is no way for regular users to delete it, through the review queue, or outside of it.

What does happen in this instance is that the site moderators are given an automatic flag. I believe it is under the umbrella of "disputed review", but an additional description states that the reason for the dispute/flag is that deletion was recommended, but the answer has a "good score". The moderator handling the flag may then delete the answer, or not. This behaviour is pointed out in Shog9's answer announcing the revamp of the 10K review queues:

  1. If the outcome of review is deletion, and a post's score prevents it from being deleted, the original flags will be marked "helpful". In these cases, and in cases where the flags are disputed, a new, moderator-only flag will be raised on the post.
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  • Is there any official documentation that this moderator flag gets raised, or how do you know it?
    – ACuriousMind
    Oct 23, 2015 at 15:54
  • @ACuriousMind I know about them because I'm a moderator on Mathematics. I've handled a number of these in my time. (I'm uncertain if there is any official documentation on them: I'm looking.)
    – user642796
    Oct 23, 2015 at 15:56
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    @ACuriousMind Not really documentation, but it's probably reasonably official. In this comment Shog9 points out »...only moderators can delete upvoted answers. However, as part of that change a moderator flag is raised when review sez delete....«
    – user642796
    Oct 23, 2015 at 16:01
  • @ACuriousMind - The exact automatic flag wording is "disputed low quality review (auto): Post has a good score but received delete votes". There are 53 of these in the queue right now on Stack Overflow, so they are raised quite frequently and moderators review each one. As for purpose, if reviewers unanimously vote to delete something that is upvoted, that provides a strong signal that we need to look into that answer ourselves. On SO, it frequently points out voting rings, sock puppets, or bad reviewers, in addition to answers that need to be deleted.
    – Brad Larson
    Oct 23, 2015 at 16:51
  • @ACuriousMind officially documented statement appears to be here: "If the post scores > 0 then raise DisputedLowQuality mod flag..."
    – gnat
    Oct 23, 2015 at 21:00
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    I wonder if reviewers who know this would vote to delete and down-vote as well
    – Mariano
    Oct 24, 2015 at 3:13

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