I flagged  as very low quality on the grounds that it was an answer consisting only of links, and was notified:     very low quality – 18 hours ago   declined - a moderator reviewed your   flag, but found no evidence to support it   However, I now see that the answer has been "deleted by Robert Harvey♦ 12 hours ago"  What did I get wrong here? I thought link-only answers were discouraged? Also, the fact that the answer was deleted, suggests that I did not get it wrong.   It is getting somewhat confusing working out what to flag and what not to flag.
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Related:  (not a dupe, that's a feature request and was closed as a dupe of another one)        (old) post does indeed say that Link-only answers can be flagged as NAA, but there are a lot of posts like  which define Not An Answer is a way that it doesn't apply to link-only answers.  Can we get some up-to-date consensus on this? That link only answers are not allowed is .
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When following a permalink to an answer that has been deleted, most viewers get to see the question instead. (The browser cannot find the &lt;div id="answer-xx" ...&gt; to scroll to, unless one has enough reputation to see deleted posts.) Most of the time this is nice, but it can be confusing.  For those who cannot see deleted posts:   Could some warning be shown when this happens? If yes, then maybe even including the reason like on ? Such as:     The answer you were linked to has been deleted for reasons of moderation.  An alternative could be to show an actual 404 page. To ensure people can then still find the related question, that question should then be linked on that 404 page too.    I guess I'd rather keep the current behavior instead of a 404 page. I assume showing the question when an answer is deleted is very much on purpose, if only for search engines? I like it too.  Like for some time, following links to deleted answers from the global Inbox did show a 404. In that Inbox, links to answers actually use the URLs for questions. Like  where 75129 really is the answer, not the question. For deleted answers this used to show a 404 for those with limited access rights. But nowadays it always redirects to the full URL, where the browser won't scroll for those who cannot see deleted answers. I like that better.
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I came across  answer earlier today, which I deemed trivial (all it gave was the solution, not an explanation of why it worked or how to prevent this from happening in the future, and was practically copied from the comments above, which were posted about two minutes before).   I left a comment explaining why I downvoted, and a few people took offense to it:     @RichardJ.RossIII You're downvoting an answer that answers the OPs question? – modifiable lvalue        @RichardJ.RossIII habitually violates the rules. Since this answer is not wrong or dangerous and is in fact useful, it should not be downvoted. +1 to compensate. – Jim Balter   My question is, is there a policy against doing this? Should we, as a community, accept and encourage such answers? Personally, I think the whole question should be deleted, as it is far from useful, but that's not the point here.  Generally speaking, I save my upvotes for answers which either helped me personally, or do an exceptional amount towards answering a question. I downvote a lot, as I have high standards (that's not to say that I'm perfect, however).  The bottom line is this: should I be more conservative with my downvoting patterns?
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Should we flag tiny "Have you tried this..?" type of answers?  I have been always inconsistent to this type of answers about in flagging part. Based on  example;   If this answer is a question (just for asking if he/she tried it or not), it should be a comment. This answer could be as a comment also and it would be better as a comment. But I don't think writing it as answer is wrong because the suggestion/solution could be the right answer also.   I always feel unstable when I see answers like that.  What is the right act to this type of answers? Should I flag them?
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I went to flag something, and in the flag dialog I got the message  "Your last flag was declined - please review it before flagging this post!"    That's all well and good, but when I went to review my flags, the statement is not accurate.  My last 5 flags were all marked 'helpful'.  The 6th down the list is marked 'declined', but that wasn't my last flag.  The message should probably be modified to correspond to the actual condition that triggers it.  Perhaps it should say     One of your flags was recently declined - please review it before flagging this post!   I'm going to guess that this message is triggered if, of all the flags of mine that have been handled by a moderator, the one that was most recently handled was declined. This isn't necessarily the last flag that I raised (the one I raised most recently), as moderators might handle them in a different order than I raised them, and it's not necessarily the flag at the top of the list.  Thus, calling it my "last" flag seems like it could cause confusion.  Yes, I realize this is extremely minor.
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I found  (only visible to 10k+ users on SFF, sorry) which had been deleted from review some hours ago but also flagged for conversion to a comment. I undeleted it and converted it to a comment (which of course re-deletes the answer), only to see that the post claimed to have been "deleted from review just now" by the same list of users as before.  Here's a screenshot of the timeline:    And here's one of what the post itself looks like now:    It was actually deleted from review 3 hours ago and then undeleted and redeleted by me 36 minutes ago, but to a casual observer it looks like it was deleted from review 36 minutes ago.  I'm posting this as a  report because it's technically showing incorrect information, but I'd be perfectly happy to be told it's actually a new feature. In fact, I've often found it annoying that when a whole bunch of users have voted to delete a post and then I convert it to a comment, their votes don't show up and it looks like I've acted unilaterally to remove it. This kind of remedies that.
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On , the accepted answer (with 23 votes) is deleted. But it is still pinned to the top. (10k required to see deleted answer)    By the looks of it, the answer was deleted from the "low quality posts" review queue. But it never got unpinned when upon deletion.
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Earlier today I flagged this  using the following flag option:     Questions asking us to recommend or find a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Stack Overflow as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead,  and what has been done so far to solve it.   If you look at the edit history, shown below, I interpreted the original post's title and body to mean that they were asking for another utility, like SlowCheetah, which is why I flagged it with the rule I stated above.  In addition, I try to do my best to also inform the user that their post does not meet the standards of the site by leaving a comment as you can see on the post.  The poster acknowledged the feedback and updated their question, rendering my flag now invalid.    Ultimately, my flag was declined, which harms me because as we all know declined flags work against a SO user's total flag count:  Reference:      How many flags do I have?      When you start out, you are allotted 10 flags per day. This number may increase to up to 100 flags per day:      You get one bonus flag per 2000 reputation.      You are awarded additional bonus flags when you flag correctly - one bonus flag for every ten net helpful flags (helpful flags minus declined flags).   I only have 8 declined flags, and IIRC, 4 of those are because of situations just like this. So is it fair to negatively affect a member's total flag count, when the flag at the time of submission was accurate?  As such, I propose a new flag status like "Inapplicable', which when used does not affect total flag count, or something similar to this, so that situations like this do not negatively affect a user's flag count.   I understand I still have to have faith that a reviewer or moderator will see the post for what it was at the time the flag was submitted, but at least by adding this option, you provide reviewers and moderator's a means to take action in a fair manner.  I want to continue flagging questions and helping posters as much as I can, I just don't think it's fair to members that spend a lot of time flagging and helping members, to risk reducing their flag count just because of a shortfall of the system and because, let's be honest here, not all moderator's can act at the same level of objectivity, we all have differing viewpoints and interpretations.  I suppose this bothers me more than other issues I've come across on the site because I flag posts to help keep the site focused and free of poor posts and yet receive no reputation for these types of efforts.  The only positive thing you can reap are a few badges, &lt;sarcasm&gt;yay!&lt;/sarcasm&gt; or a negatively impacted flag count.  Just doesn't seem fair IMHO when my affects contribute to increasing the quality of posts which is just as important as contributing a quality answer IMO.  And to add, this isn't the first time this has happened to me and many other members of the site.  And yet, nothing has been done about it. Perhaps as a community we start spending a little bit more time little details like this to help keep people feeling positive about their efforts, especially those that aren't measured by reputation.  Thank you for your time,  Cheers.
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Several minutes ago there was a  asked on SO, which when originally posted, was just a terrible post, which was hard to determine what was being asked, and there was absolutely no details provided, for which I flagged it as Low-Quality. The OP has less then 10k rep.  This was the entirety of the original post:     I am working on an app which should run only once after the Installation,Even the launcher should be disabled after I quit it   In my Flag-History, I am now seeing that the flag was deemed disputed, and I am confused as to why.  I read that if a post is flagged of low quality, and it is edited, the flags become disputed because they are supposedly supposed to mark questions that are irrecoverable by edits..  The question has since undergone 3 edits by the OP, none of which added much information that would help the community to help them, and the question has also been Closed as not a real question, yet my flag is still marked as disputed..  Does this non-helpful flag have any affect on my flag-history?
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While reviewing I came upon  by the OP of the question. I believe it was meant to be a comment to another post or comment that I have not been able to identify. Normally I would have flagged this as "Not an answer" and moved on.  But...  For whatever reason, most probably due to not understanding how SO works, the OP marked this post as the accepted answer. I have to admit that this is a first for me - I've never felt the urge to flag an accepted answer before, but I find myself being far more cautious at the sight of that green checkmark.   Should I treat accepted answers like this any differently? Accepting an answer usually (although probably not in this case) means that it is the final word on the issue at hand as far as the OP is concerned, which is why I am reluctant to flag it. What happens to a question if the accepted answer is deleted? E.g. is it placed back into the Unanswered pile? What about the accept-points for its poster?
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I think we can all agree, this sucks:  If you've been around a little while, you've probably encountered hundreds of answers like this in various forums, some of them even marked as &quot;The Answer&quot; by well-meaning1 forum admins looking to close a thread. We could try to enumerate the commonly-observed problems with it...  Link is probably broken If link isn't broken, it's spam If link isn't spam, it's to some broadly-related resource that the answerer found by pressing &quot;I'm feeling lucky&quot; when googling the question's title.  ...but the real issue here is that we don't know! Even if the link was originally pointing directly to the most awesomeest answer ever for exactly the question being asked, there's nothing in the answer itself to even hint at what direction we're being pointed in. Strip the markup, and this is what you're left with:  i think you should take The tutorial HERE! This will help you a lot  Is there even one tiny speck of information there? No. Even the title of the page being linked to would have provided something to go on, but that was entirely too much work. So let me be clear: this sort of response is not an answer. If you see this, flag it. Moderators, if you see it flagged, delete it. There's really only one valid exception to this rule, and that's when the question is:  Suggest me some tutorials where i can learn quick.  Don't get me wrong, it's still a bad answer - but when the question is kinda asking for bad answers this is to be expected. Close or flag the question and move on - this is much more efficient than hanging around to babysit it by deleting every crap answer that inevitably shows up. If you're still reading, you're probably getting really bored by now. &quot;Gee, Shog - answers that contain ZERO information are terrible, horrible, very-bad things? What shocking revelations will you share next?&quot; Yeah. It's really simple... Except, . See, the problem is that once you step away from black-and-white &quot;answers / doesn't answer&quot; decision-making, things get... Interesting. And all those other answers with links in them See, this is an answer:  And so is this:  Yes, they're both very short, and yes, they contain links. But strip the markup, and you still get at least a little bit of useful information. Does that mean these answers should forever hang around the site? No, not necessarily - if it turns out they're just not that useful, they should probably still be removed - or at very least, down-voted so that they rank below other answers. Just remember: if the text of the post contains an honest attempt at answering the question, then it is an answer - so don't flag it otherwise, and if you do, don't complain if your flag gets declined. Answers &amp; Apples If you're still confused, forget about answers. Think about apples instead:  Answers are just like that, but less tasty in pies.  1 By which I mean to say, &quot;criminally lazy&quot;
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I know how disputed flags work. Today, I reviewed a "not an answer" flag and marked it as invalid.   I've later seen a disputed message with this reason:     invalid flag         disputed - a moderator reviewed your flag, but found no evidence to   support it   Given that disputed flags are in the ,  Is this message applicable only to my flag or is this message also for the original flagger?  Or put otherwise, are all disputed flags now shown this message (or similar decline reason)?  I've run out of flags for today to test this further.
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Typically when I see a , I have to use a custom flag and explain in the text box that it is, usually simply in the form of typing just "link-only answer."  I think that there should be a "link-only answer" option in the flag reason dialog box. This would make it a lot easier to flag these types of answers.  Also,  Why not make it easier to flag?  Furthermore, mods and/or 10k-ers don't even seem to know what to flag them as at all:   (one of my flags)  (a different user's flag from )
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On posts with a positive score, the very low quality flag option isn't enabled. This is great for many instances - if a post is +7, it's most likely high quality. We don't want unexperienced users flagging those.  However, this brings with it a problem when flagging link-only answers. Relatively often, a link-only answer will have a positive score - the link is useful. If the score is just +1, I downvote it, flag, and move on. If it's +2 or above, though, I'm kinda stuck.   I could use a custom flag, but 10kers don't get to see those - meaning the mod workload just got that much heavier. I could flag it as NAA, but it is an answer. It's just very low quality.  So, I propose that the VLQ flag option be reneenabled on positively-voted posts for users with x helpful flags - maybe 500? 1000? 50? The details can be worked out.  Opinions? Huge, gaping holes in my reasoning?
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Following sequence of events occurred on :   First answer was posted, but was wrong. I posted my answer, which was correct :-) First answer was then modified to match my answer (with attribution)   Meanwhile, the first answer got a total of four up-votes, some from when it was still wrong. My answer has one. There is no accepted answer yet.  I guess this falls into the "grin-and-bear-it-and-move-on" category? What are the ethics of essentially posting a different answer which is still timestamped with the time of an earlier, incorrect answer? Is this flaggable?
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In the  there are flags for duplicate answers. For users without the rep, this is what it looks like:      In  Martijn states that those flags are system generated to help in detecting undesired behaviour. There is also  that guides how to handle those flags.   Looking at the current flags I conclude that answers that are an exact copy of the same user are detected. Shouldn't that same flag also be automatically raised if an exact copy of an answer by another user is found? I assume 'almost' exact copies will generate to much false positives?
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I don't have enough rep to view deleted posts yet. So should I be able to see the first few lines of a post via the tooltip?: (ie. rolling over the titile of a post gives you a tooltip with the first few lines of the post, just like hovering over a question on the main question page)    Yes, it's spam, I know, but there are more legit reasons for flagging - should a low-rep user be able to see a bit of this content??