Preferred action when seeing spam in VLQ review

Question

Currently, in the Review UI, I only have an option of "link-only answer (and not spam)", there's no "flag" link or anything else to mark it as spam. I have to go to the main UI to do that.

The reason I'm asking is, I regularly get spammy posts in VLQ review. Though they typically turn out to be audits, you never know. I do know, however, that by system's design, spam is intended to be dealt with in a different way than VLQ, so just recommending to delete looks like an improper way to handle such a case.

So, the question is:

• Is it sufficient to select "recommend deletion" in these cases? Won't this undermine the system's effectiveness in dealing with spam and spammers?
  • Since I cannot know if such a post is an audit, I'm asking for both cases when it is an audit and when it is not.

Answer 1

Practical guide to spam in review queues:

• If you are reviewing on a site with audits: It's probably an audit. Spam doesn't live that long on these (active) sites. Play along with the silly audit system by recommending deletion. (In the unlikely event it's not an audit, you will know by the absence of "Congratulations"; then hit "back" in the browser, go to the post and spam-flag.)

• If you are reviewing on a site without audits: go directly to the post and spam-flag; skip it in the Review Queue. Deletion from review queue is not a desirable outcome for spam posts (for one thing, it doesn't replace the post content with a "not shown" notice).