New users posting thanks, comments or new questions as answers on existing questions is very common. It is also something that should be easily handled by the community itself, without requiring diamond moderators to intervene. The action that need to be taken in such a case are:  commenting on the post to explain that answers shouldn't be used in this way deleting the post in rare cases where the post contains valuable information, but isn't an answer, it can be converted to a comment  Problems with the current tools Commenting can be done by the community, though . In theory, the community can delete such posts. The post needs to be downvoted and three 20k+ users need to vote to delete it. There are several problems with that, making community deletion rather rare. The other problem with community deletion is that the bar is very high, there just aren't that many 20k+ users on most site. And reputation alone isn't a very good way to determine who should have access to that kind of moderator tool. Conversion to comment is a mod-only feature, and probably should stay that way. The temptation to do the nicer thing and just convert to a comment when the post should probably be deleted is pretty high. My possible solution There are a lot of users that know the SE system well and can reliably identify non-answers, but don't have the 20k reputation necessary to fully act on them. It shouldn't be too hard to identify these user based on their flagging volume and success. I think that a criterium like &quot;flagged x posts as not an answer with at least y% declared valid&quot; would be a far better way to identify trustworthy users than the current 20k+ reputation requirement. For those users that are determined to be trustworthy, either the &quot;not an answer&quot; flags should automatically delete the post when enough of them are cast by trusted users and if at least one of them has commented on the post. This would enable those users to deal with &quot;not an answer&quot; flags without requiring a moderator to step in. As a way to safeguard these expanded privileges against abuse or mistakes I'd suggest that even a single &quot;disputed&quot; flag would disable the automatic mechanisms and force the flag to be handled by a diamond moderator. A different possibility would be to just give those users a delete link on &quot;not an answer&quot;-flagged posts.
6583
are pretty cool... You get a birds-eye view of activity on the site, a &quot;dashboard&quot; view of what's happening. Some of the individual tools haven't scaled particularly well with Stack Overflow's growth, but the concept behind them is still sound: we trust you to enough to be a bee watcher now.  ...and then there's . What a let-down! Once upon a time, this queue contained spam and offensive flags, which one might reasonably assume were important enough to put in front of the more trusted members of the site. Re-flagging them brought them that much closer to deletion, while editing them offered salvation to some hapless author. Nowadays, it's a bunch of Not an Answer flags and a smattering of assorted cruft. 10K users can't even vote to delete these; only 20K users have that privilege. Re-flagging them does nothing but increase their priority in the moderator flag queue, where they frequently outrank more pressing issues;  has . Also, it's , and the behavior has diverged far enough from that of the moderator flag queue on which it is based that it has become an active hindrance to further development of the tooling there. Worst of all, we have  that's available to anyone with the editing privilege. It even has logic built in to prioritize answers likely to be deleted for users with . It's like we gave you a car for your 10th birthday, and then replaced it with a rusty bicycle when you turned 16. It was a nice idea, but it has outlived its usefulness. Proposed changes The /tools/flagged route goes away. Period. No replacement. The rest of the 10K tools stick around as informational pages. Not an Answer flags go into /review/low-quality, . Then we beef up the Low Quality review process to make better use of more experienced reviewers and solve this whole &quot;declined / helpful / disputed&quot; flag debate once and for all:  Effective # of reviews required == ReviewsRequired + # of applicable flags (where ReviewsRequired is 2 on Stack Overflow, 1 everywhere else). So 1 VLQ or NAA flag means EffectiveReviewsRequired=3. LQ tasks are not dequeued until one of the following conditions is met:  Post is edited from within review. Outcome: flags are marked &quot;helpful&quot; (current behavior). Post accumulates 3 Delete votes (can only happen when post scores &lt;= 0 and reviewers have &gt;= 20K rep). Outcome: post is deleted, flags are marked &quot;helpful&quot;. Task accumulates EffectiveReviewsRequired &quot;Looks Good&quot; reviews. Outcome: if the number of (Recommend)Delete reviews is &gt;= the number of Looks Good reviews, mark flags &quot;disputed&quot; and raise DisputedLowQuality mod flag. Otherwise, mark flags &quot;declined&quot;. Task accumulates 6* RecommendDelete + Delete reviews. Outcome: mark flags &quot;helpful&quot;. If the post scores &gt; 0 then raise DisputedLowQuality mod flag, else just delete post (current behavior).   As under the current system, flags on posts that've already completed one full review cycle without being deleted should skip /review and go directly into the mod queue.  End result  Flags get handled faster, more accurately, and with less wasted effort from 10K reviewers. Moderators are free to focus on situations that can't be handled by the community - the ! Developers are free to make enhancements to the moderator tooling without having to work around 10K user restrictions.  Questions Am I forgetting anything here? I haven't really spent much time in the 10K flag queue since back when it was filled with spam flags and therefore useful - is there a use-case that you depend on that would be lost with its removal? Post 'em below. *: on Stack Overflow, only .
21924
Of course spam posts should be flagged, and if they come up in review, rejected.  Over on Mi Yodeya during the past 24 hours I’ve helped delete and reject four spam posts through the review queue, and I can only imagine that others were posted over the course of the night. To clarify, I’m referring to edits and answers that were about 99.274% words that I don’t think any decent person would use in everyday discussions, even if someone got them really angry.   Thing is, if the only thing we can do as a community is delete his posts/reject his edits, and as moderators to ban his account, can’t he just create a new account? Further, some of these posts . Maybe the mods can ban his IP address? I’m not one, so I have no idea what kind of power they wield in that respect. But he can always just get a new computer.   I don’t have the numbers to see what this is like on other sites, but I know this doesn’t happen often on Mi Yodeya. I wonder, then, whether this is the optimal solution, or whether an automatic spam filter be put into place - say, a new review queue that automatically deletes posts or rejects edits that can then be voted on whether to be reposted if it’s a false alarm. Perhaps it can be automatically triggered by certain keywords (like ****, %$#^, or @$+^).   Now, all of these posts that I voted to delete/reject came up in Suggested Edits and First Posts. Maybe such edits would show up in Low Quality in general, and that just wasn’t the case here because of precedence rules. I don’t know. But perhaps the above would be a better solution, if this is even as big of a problem as I’m making it out to be.
78571
Moderators should be able to comment on things after normal users are unable to, such as when a post is deleted or locked. As a moderator on Programmers, I try to leave a comment (if necessary) before taking the appropriate action on the post. However, in the time it takes to write a comment (which often includes digging up links to the most relevant resources and citing specific problems), things may happen - users can leave new answers or comments, Community or the author can delete the post, and so on.  A responding moderator should be able to take the appropriate moderator action on the post to remove the problematic behavior/content from the site and then leave a comment so that the user can learn why this behavior is unacceptable or what needs to be done to fix the content (if it's fixable).  This would effectively change the workflow from {hope no one will do anything -> write a comment -> hope nothing happened to the post that invalidates or blocks the comment -> moderate} to {moderate -> comment}.  Diamond moderators should be able to comment on posts that are otherwise locked from comments.  When a moderator comments on a deleted post, the comment should generate an inbox notification for the post's author just as it would if it were posted right before the post was deleted.
61387
I'm trying to  when I run into this:     "You have already deleted 5 of your own posts today; further deletes are blocked"      I found conflicting information on this very annoying limit:   This post from May 25, 2010: . This is marked . If this is no longer the case, please edit that question and flag it as . Then , indicates that the problem has risen from the dead -- despite :     Each time that I've seen it (pruning subpar answers), it's been a user who is deleting their own redundant zero-upvote answers. Can you tweak the algorithm slightly so answers with less than one upvote don't count towards tripping this flag?     (Emphasis added.) :     I don't mind it when         cleaning up redundant answers on questions that have multiple alternate good answers   cleaning up old, "less awesome" answers that are no longer reflective of the user's current skill level         (Emphasis added.)     So why do we have barriers in place, to making SO answers less, "less awesome"?      Proposed Solution:  Please let us (¿once again?) delete an unlimited number of our own answers, when they have zero up-votes and are not marked as the answer.  Otherwise, please edit the linked questions to clear up the confusion.
109126
There was a suggestion on uservoice - now down, that really illustrate the need to stop users from gaming the system by simply asking meaningless, ridiculous question after question to gain rep. We have users who have gamed the system enough to actually have moderation capabilities.   These users do not deserve the system's trust and instead cause nothing but problems.   My solution is to enforce a threshold for how many questions you may ask and receive reputation on based on your answers or other activities.  Please stop these people from becoming trusted members of the community. It will not be good for anyone.
33152
Could we have a method of explaining why we think a question or answer should be deleted?  It could work identically to closing a question, maybe with an additional text-input box (like the "Requires Moderator attention" flag option) to provide additional info because the reasons for deletion should really be more specific..  For example, "exact duplicate" doesn't explain to me the user has re-posted the same question, thus, it should definitely be deleted (not just left closed). Like with close-messages, these reasons would be listed under the deleted item (or answer).   I don't think comments are suitable, as they can be a pain to quickly.. "extract" deletion reasons from them - I have to scan through the comments, and they may all be irrelevant.  Equally, for un-deletion, it'd be useful to know why another user thinks a question should be restored. For example "new user deleted the question after they accepted an answer", or "Jeff went insane and started deleting any questions with the letter O in it".  I think requiring un-deletion reasons is possibly more important, since commenting is disabled on deleted questions - we have no way of explaining why we think it should be restored
112059
(And why are they obliged to see them?)  It should be an option togglable in your account settings that doesn't require any amount of reputation. I think some of the deleted questions, even if considered "noise" by most, can be interesting to others. What's the downside of allowing everyone - if they want to - to see them?    Edit: as I said in the title I meant deleted by the community through the vote process. This does not apply to:   Questions deleted by the OP Questions deleted by a moderator Answers
16422
Since high rep users gain some pretty powerful privileges I wonder what checks and balances are in place to prevent them from abusing their privileges.  I am not near these privileges on any SE site, but a particular user that I think might abuse them is. , demonstrates one way that misuse can be highlighted.  Is that the only thing that prevents bad behavior for high rep users? You have to 'report' them on meta? What if you try to stop them but they 'punish' you, and you can't do anything about it because you are low rep? It would be nice if all their actions were public record; maybe some where on their profile page.  Things that might be done that abuses privileges in my opinion:   Someone may edit questions so they favor his own answer, or disfavor yours because your he does not like your answer. Delete votes on questions (I don't even know what this means) for subjective reasons. Dismiss flags that are valid.   Also, I am a bit confused between a moderator and a trusted user. I know that mods have more power but I would like to see a side-by-side comparison.
86363
I was discussing this question on team chat:  This question is a high value asset on the site it was posted, it already has 150k views, 120+ total votes between questions and answers, and a very high ratio of positive anonymous feedback. I approached improving this question aggressively, too aggressively for the team's taste:  I made  to the accepted answer  I deleted 8+ &quot;duplicate&quot; answers in that question, including a  and  answer in that question.    (Since then I have undone my actions, except for a comment conversion and the big edit.) This raises the question: What should be done to keep this high value question in great shape so it effectively helps lots of people down the line? Specifically:  Should there be any answer deletion? No answer deletion? Some answer deletion? Should we play favorites improving the top voted answer / first answer? Will deleting answers with +17 and +13 score turn away high rep users? Has this asset become a public resource, whatever that means? What should we do when new answers trickle in and are duplicates?
13632
In the last few days, I've come across four instances where a non-answer was left by a new user, that answer was deleted by the system after six Recommend Deletion votes in the review queues, then the poster promptly reversed that deletion with a single vote.   In each case, the answer had piled up quite a few "not an answer" or "very low quality" flags, which were all cleared the instant the answer was deleted by the system. However, the poster was able to single-handedly override all that when they undeleted their non-answer with a single vote. This required others to go and re-flag the answer and for a moderator to step in and delete it so that they couldn't restore the answer.  This seems like a bad design. A user should not be able to by themselves overturn deletion of their answers that were removed by a community vote in review.  I propose that answers deleted via five Recommend Deletion votes from the review queues require the normal three undelete votes that posts deleted using regular community delete votes do. This would prevent users from bringing back their non-answers after the flags on them had been cleared, potentially allowing non-answers to come back and clutter up the site.
13739
When I flag new user posts for "Not an answer" or "me too" type stuff, I usually write a comment to the user asking him to post a separate question  and don't pollute the universe bla bla.   Now I can see later - the post was deleted by a mod, but will the OP receive my comment if he logs in after a while - since the post is deleted.  Examples (I assume 10Ks can see the deleted posts - I'm not sure if these are the ones I commented on, but I flagged these for deletion)   or
45731
When approving a post that system thinks should not have you are presented with something along the lines of  This post has severe quality issues. It is abusive nonsense, noise, spam, blatantly off-topic or otherwise irredeemable - readers will find it offensive or repulsive rather than helpful. You should delete or recommend deletion when reviewing such posts. Don't worry, we've already handled this post appropriately - but please take a minute to look it over closely, keeping in mind the guidance shown above.  With a &quot;I understand&quot; button, what about if you disagree with that assertion? Is there a way to indicate that? If there isn't perhaps one should be added so that data can be collected to improve the system. For example: While reviewing the low quality posts queue I got the following answer from  to to the question   Try  (I'm a developer). It does exactly what you're looking for, free of charge.  Which I approved and the system responded that I should have recommended deletion. From what it looks like to me the OP is asking a question about adding basic username/password authentication for an Amazon s3 hosted website and the answer is mentioning a free product/service that does what the user wants. It is true that the user answering is affiliated (they posted a disclaimer) with the product but from what I understand that is .
102704
This question is a great example of why Stack Overflow is getting a reputation for being a hostile environment these days         This is clearly a developer used to C# who is trying to apply existing concepts to C++ and failing. You can see from his comments that he has been googling for an answer all day, has no coworker who can help him and came to Stack Overflow as a last resort. How do we reward him?  Here is a sample of the feedback we've provided so far    Pick up a good C++ book and learn the actual language.  The problem here is that you have no idea about C++ And why in the world are you converting Managed code to Unmanaged?    All of these have been flagged. But given the load on the moderators this question was closed and the user resorted to apologizing in several comments for his inability to google well enough all while the hostile comments / answers remain.    Does anyone seriously think the OP is going to post here again?    Why do we accept this as OK? Why can five users, who would comment only  if we allowed them, dictate the reputation of the site? Why does it take so long for hostile comments to be removed? Why do we let people who post hostile comments keep posting at all?    If you want to scream RTFM then may I suggest LKML. There should be no place for you on Stack Overflow.
87135
A user whose post was flagged as not-an-answer can remove all those flags by deleting his post and undeleting it right afterwards. This happens because those flags are (rightfully) cleared when the post is deleted. However, when the post is undeleted by the user without any edits I think any Community-cleared flags should be reactivated (or a new flag raised instead) to avoid someone from cheating this way to prevent his post from showing up in the history.
49816
I've seen so many should-be-a-comment &quot;edits&quot; or &quot;answers&quot; in the review queues by new users, and it's pretty obvious that to them this was the only way to somehow interact with a question due to their lack of allowance to leave a comment. And sometimes (just sometimes) this comment would contribute something useful. So it's a shame to waste reviewers' time to first figure out that a suggested &quot;edit&quot; / &quot;answer&quot; should actually be a comment and then not exactly having tools to turn the former into an actual comment. If the new user would instead have had the possibility to clearly indicate that they wanted to leave a comment which would then be put into a simple &quot;comments (by low-rep users)&quot; review queue, where reviewers could maybe even leave one of the (more specific) automated comments à la &quot;You should ask this as a new question&quot; (where new question might even not only link to the &quot;ask question&quot; site but put the users comment into the title or body). And until approval the comment would by default by hidden by a &quot;on hold&quot; line that only higher-rep users, say &gt;500, could toggle to view (and vote to approve directly in place). This is typical practice in many blogs' comments, and I think since we're community reviewing anyway this might be improve the hijacking situation. edit Note that by design those automated comments would not need to trigger a notification to the post's OP but only to the commenter. Whether the un-reviewed comment should already trigger a notification to the OP or not is a different question. I propose not, since the obvious once-in-a-while spam comment would be easier detected by a reviewer who is currently concentrating on specifically determining the validity of a comment. edit2 As noted in  these auto-replies should not clutter the original post - once a comment has been determined &quot;Actually I want to ask a new question&quot; they (and the reply) won't show up below the post except for the original commenter who will also be notified if they registered.  In summary:  Low-rep user posts a comment -&gt; Below the post there will be a &quot;1 comment under review&quot; link and that comment will be added to the comment-review queue (see images below). No notification will be triggered for the OP, since the high likelihood of an unjustified comment was the reason for comments originally not being post-able by just anyone If a reviewer approves the comment, it will show up like any usual comment and now a notification to the OP (and @replied-to users) will be sent If a reviewer rejects the comment (with an optional reason as reply), it won't be shown below the original post as &quot;under review&quot; anymore. It, together with the reply, will be visible to the original commenter who will be notified, but no one else will be bothered by it edit3 As per : The commenter will not be able to post further comments until their comment is either reviewed or self-deleted. As , a negative review/flag should refute that user's ability to comment any more (or reduce a very low contingent of unreviewed comments allowed)
28072
In the past few weeks, I've received a few emails from users asking me why I deleted their posts. It's almost always for answers deleted after being correctly flagged as &quot;not an answer&quot;. Typically, the user just doesn't fully understand the Stack Exchange format, and thinks they're leaving a comment or reply. After linking them to the  page and the  page, they typically understand. Now, deleted posts already show a link to the deleted answers help page, which I guess people don't click much. So, I'm suggesting that we make it more obvious by specifically telling them why their post was deleted. I'd like to see some way for moderators to optionally select a deletion reason when removing posts. Something similar to the rejected suggested edits reasons, which would show the user why their post was deleted with relevant links. Here are some of the reasons I'd suggest:  Your post was deleted because...   Comment as answer:  it would be more appropriate as a comment. You can always comment on your own posts, and can comment everywhere once you earn 50 reputation points.   Question as answer:  it appears to be asking a related question. Instead of leaving an answer, you can . Make sure to refer back to this original question, explaining what answers you've tried and why they didn't work.   Me-too answer:  it appears to be re-stating the original question. If you have the same problem as the original question, you can         (if rep &gt;= 15){up vote it to show your support} (if rep &gt;= 50){or start a bounty} (if rep &lt; 15){use the &quot;was this post helpful yes/no&quot; links to support it}.   Thanks answer:  it appears to be a response to another answer. If you'd like to show appreciation for an answer, you can         (if rep &gt;= 15){vote up the answer}  (if rep &lt; 15){use the &quot;was this post helpful yes/no&quot; links under the answer} to support the answer that helped you.   Other:  it does not fundamentally answer the question.     ... For more information, see the  and &quot;&quot;.  I think these cover all of the situations under which I would delete an answer and feel like the user deserves an explanation (albeit a canned message). If it's spam, gibberish, or otherwise obviously not genuine content, then the user shouldn't really be surprised when it's removed, or it might be appropriate to leave a comment. It's too much work to constantly be writing comments though (even with the pro forma comments script, it's kind of unofficial and inconsistent), so I think this would help a lot for making deletion more transparent to the user. Example:  To avoid making this too difficult for the moderator should they not wish to add a reason, the deletion could still happen instantaneously, but a box could show up after the deletion occurs, asking if they'd like to select a reason. If they don't choose a reason, it would just remain with the current default.
87577
My common workflow when I see a blatant spam post by a 1 rep user is:   flag as spam (when I'm a mod this auto-deletes) go to user profile As a mod, I destroy the user. As a regular user I spam flag the other spam posts linked from the profile   These are a bit more clicks than absolutely necessary. While it is not terribly important to optimize this, it would be nice if we could perform these steps with even less effort.  My main assumption is that a 1 rep user that has one of their posts flagged as spam until deletion is almost certainly a pure spammer. I might be wrong there, but I've never seen an example that violates this rule.  Having to go to the profile is an unnecessary step, but I always do that to determine if the user has created more spam posts. Destroying is also not necessary, but it is quicker if the user has multiple posts, and if I have to go to the profile anyway it's also only a few clicks away.  To make this quicker, I suggest that users that have never earned any reputation and that have all their posts deleted by spam flags should be auto-destroyed. Destroying accounts doesn't really slow down spammers much or at all, but it is somewhat tidier and many mods do it anyway, even for single post spammers. It would also serve as feedback that this user can't possibly have more spam posts, preventing other users from checking the user's profile without need.  When I spam flag a post from a 1 rep user as a mod, I'd like to get immediate feedback on how many other posts the user has, and maybe even a quick way to directly preview those posts and destroy the account.  This would of course not happen for posts from real, active users due to the 1 rep limitations. Excessive self-promotion and other borderline spam issues are usually not dealt with by account destruction. This restriction also severely reduces the potential for abuse of this feature.  As for leaving accounts alive to gather information about spam URLs and/or IPs, this is something that should happen behind the scenes anyway that that we mods should not have to think about. The community and mods provide enough information by spam flagging, it would just have to be collected and aggregated by SE internally (and maybe this already happens).