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This comes up often in the queue. People write bad short answers. My mouse wanders towards the downvote button, except that it's hidden in the LQP review queue. The post certainly doesn't "Looks OK". I don't feel like pressing "Recommend deletion", because: (a) the post fits none of the template reasons described there (b) I think that instead of having their answer silently deleted with "No comment needed", the poster should be given a chance to see that their post is being downvoted and be able: to call-out as to why, bring other members' attention to that post, etc.

So, what should be done in such cases?

Note: This isn't a problem of illegible answers. The answer posted is just one or two lines, incomplete, and bad. If it was illegible, I would choose the "Edit" option, but this isn't the case I'm discussing here.

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  • Isn't there a VLQ flag for answer posts as well?
    – πάντα ῥεῖ
    Commented May 18, 2018 at 16:11
  • @πάνταῥεῖ There isn't. Also, wouldn't it be recursive if I flag a post in the LQP queue as LQP again? ;P
    – Gaurang Tandon
    Commented May 18, 2018 at 16:11
  • "People write bad short answers." Can you give us some (anonymized) examples? Short doesn't inherently imply bad.
    – πάντα ῥεῖ
    Commented May 18, 2018 at 16:15
  • " I don't feel like pressing "Recommend deletion", because these posts aren't spam" what? not only spam gets deleted and spam should not be in the LQ queue, recommend deletion is exactly the right thing to do for what you discribe, if it is bad it can't be saved, it needs to be removed.
    – Mark Kirby
    Commented May 18, 2018 at 16:20
  • @πάνταῥεῖ I was hesitant to give examples because I want the discussion to be general and not overly specific towards just the examples I give. Here are two: a and b. Note that they are attempts at answering the question, but they are incomplete and bad. They don't belong to the comments section either. (Note: I voted Looks OK because I was unsure of what decision to take, which led to me asking this question here)
    – Gaurang Tandon
    Commented May 18, 2018 at 16:21
  • @MarkKirby Sorry, I wasn't as detailed as I should've been. I am editing.
    – Gaurang Tandon
    Commented May 18, 2018 at 16:22
  • @GaurangTandon That's exactly what I wanted to avoid, that you're giving links to specific Q&A pairs. That's why I said anonymized. Without concrete examples it's hard to give you a guiding advice anyways.
    – πάντα ῥεῖ
    Commented May 18, 2018 at 16:24
  • I would vote to remove both of your example as both are lacking detail and, at best, should be comments.
    – Mark Kirby
    Commented May 18, 2018 at 16:24
  • @MarkKirby Comments are supposed to ask for clarifications or suggest changes to the post, not answer the question itself. So sorry but I disagree that those posts should have been comments. That, and I have updated my question, please have a look.
    – Gaurang Tandon
    Commented May 18, 2018 at 16:28
  • I said at best they are comments, if you think removing it without notice is unfair, leave a comment on the OP explaing how it could be improved and what will happen if no action is taken to improve it.
    – Mark Kirby
    Commented May 18, 2018 at 16:31
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    The review queue need a remake IMO, I always end up with the question/answer in another tab to do such tasks.
    – yagmoth555
    Commented May 18, 2018 at 16:38

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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If the answer is really an attempt to answer the question, no matter how bad it is, choose Looks OK (or Edit if you think it needs to be edited). You can also open the actual answer in a new tab and downvote it and comment on it explaining why it's bad. But don't choose Recommend Deletion on those kinds of answers.

Recommend Deletion is only for answers that aren't answers, such as "thanks" or "I have this problem too" answers, questions posted as answers or link-only answers. Most of the time when Recommend Deletion is the correct choice, one of the comments in the Recommend Deletion menu is appropriate. Even if it's counter-intuitive, "Looks OK" doesn't mean that the answer is good, it just means that the answer isn't bad enough to be deleted.

This post explains that in more detail.

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  • 1
    "Looks OK" doesn't mean "Looks Good".
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented May 18, 2018 at 18:19
  • Thanks. I guess I'll stick to pressing Looks OK for the meanwhile. Though I still feel that: (1) opening the post in a new tab only to downvote it is counter-productive, those buttons should be in the LQP UI (2) "Looks OK" is a misnomer. I find resonance with these comments by ruakh and Undo on that linked post.
    – Gaurang Tandon
    Commented May 19, 2018 at 1:05
  • Regardless, I think this is not the right place to deliberate about possible changes to the system - because I tagged this discussion - and instead how to work my way around in the current system. So thanks for your answer!
    – Gaurang Tandon
    Commented May 19, 2018 at 1:07

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