Allow posts older than 7 days to be flagged as VLQ

Question

I find it strange that we cannot flag posts older than 7 Days as Very Low Quality.

I have read this answer from Shog9 and understand the reasonings for why the time limit was implemented in that current process.

Currently, when a question is older than 7 days and it receives a VLQ flag it bypasses Triage and goes directly to the moderators.

However, I don't think that was the best solution to the problem of

Sending too much noise to moderators

Would a solution of age not bypassing the triage system have been a better solution? As due to the time limit of the VLQ flag option the only feasible flag option for a post older than 7 days is to flag for "moderator attention" which is sending noise to the moderators anyway. So surely allowing old posts to still be flagged but not bypassing the review queues is a better approach? As this allows us mortal users to remove these posts ourselves and the moderators don't have to be be involved.

From discussions with ShadowWizard

1. If we'll be able to flag old answers, it will flood the review queue.
2. On smaller sites mods with.. ahem... spare time... can easily go through them and delete, but on SO(Stack Overflow)... there's just too many.

1. Yes I understand the queues will probably initially spike due to more posts being able to be flagged, I think the benefits of removing Low Quality content outweighs the drawback in a spike in flags. And as is stands (for Stack Overflow, I do not have access to review in other sites but I suspect it is similar) the only queue that is in a high number is the Close Votes queue (but when is that never high) so I am confident there will be reviewer available to handle these.

2. Low traffic on the other sites in the Stack Exchange network can be a factor the the quantity of low quality posts just due to the fact that some sites will get far more posts than others. So if a time limit on the ability to flag as VLQ is the preferred option could it be relative to the size of the site in question? As a one-size-fits-all approach isn't the way personally I would go about things, as with the high traffic of some of the sites the great work done by reviewers and the bots can miss things depending on when they were posted.

What is the general consensus on this?

Answer 1

I think this is a good idea because,

• Low quality things get missed the first time around, I have seen absolute garbage posts get left up for years and years.

• The need to delete doesn't go away after a week and you can still raise NAA or spam or even mod flags or ask others in chat to vote to delete. Having the Low Quality flag available would make this simpler.

• Some answers are enough of answers to not fit the NAA flag but are still low quality enough to be deleted but the flag options make this confusing since the NAA flag is the option you have.

Just because a week has passed doesn't mean something shouldn't be deleted, let's make it easier for the caretakers to delete old low quality posts.