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I just had my first look at the flag queue. And, of course, I want this tool not to lose any quality by my contribution. And now even the first post I am shown turns out to be difficult:

Linux Ubuntu - inode limitation on a 500GB hard disk ? Can you explain please?

I do understand why this has been flagged (which is not the same as agreeing...). The answer is so general that it is hardly useful. And it contains comment elements ("I need more info"). But the flag text says "It does not even try to answer the question" and that is clearly not the case here.

I think that not deleting but the voting system is responsible for handling rather bad answers. But what is the community concensus on the case of doubt: Leave a low quaility answer (which has a suitable voting) or throw it away?

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  • 3
    Hey! Welcome to 10k! :)
    – terdon Mod
    Commented Mar 2, 2014 at 17:09
  • 1
    I think it's odd that the button says "flag or disagree" but AFAICT there is no subsequent option to "disagree". All you can do is add or not add more flags. Which is kind of like a ballot with three options "Yes", "Yes -- but", "Yes -- and"...
    – goldilocks
    Commented Mar 4, 2014 at 19:28
  • Sorry, dude. Didn't mean to make it difficult.
    – mikeserv
    Commented Mar 4, 2014 at 21:56

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Personally, I flagged that one as "not an answer", since it is really a comment, and also voted to delete it. The post is not answering the question, it's just asking the OP for more information:

There's no limit on the hard disk - the limit is set on the filesystem you've applied to it. In order for me to explain further you'll have to tell us what filesystem you're actually using.

Has the filesystem reached its limit? If so, try clearing your caches on disk first such as ~/.cache and /tmp and etc before stressing too much.

That's not really an attempt to answer but an attempt to clarify the Q and, as such, was correctly flagged as "not an answer" in my opinion.

In any case, the whole idea of the reputation system is that someone who has >=10k rep can make these decisions. So, if you feel it is a good answer, you should flag it as "has invalid flags". It really is up to you, the SE sites are communities and you have just reached the rep level that means you are an experienced enough member of this community to make these kinds of judgment calls. So, do whatever you feel is best, irresepective of whether others agree or not. If enough people feel like you the answer will remain and if enough feel as I do, it will be deleted.

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  • And I voted to delete it. I think I downvoted it so that I could vote to delete it too. I generally like to get this cruft out of the way. I don't see a lot of value in keeping a bunch of answers such as this on the site which are really just comments anyway. And I agree with Terdon's assessment, we generally try to work together too in the chatroom, no need bumping into each other. Our site's volume is low enough that most of us see everything that comes in and we try to coordinate our decision making.
    – slm Mod
    Commented Mar 2, 2014 at 17:15
  • @slm yeah, I voted to delete too.
    – terdon Mod
    Commented Mar 2, 2014 at 17:15
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    And by all means, we all make mistakes so if you see something you don't agree w/ bring it up in chat, we regularly reverse closed Q's either b/c someone sheds new light on them or we'll coordinate a cleanup and then cycle it through all of us to get it reopened.
    – slm Mod
    Commented Mar 2, 2014 at 17:18
  • I guess it seldom happens that people vote for deletion and someone else considers it "a good answer" ;-) I just think there might be a difference between "bad answer" and "delete it". But in this case my assessment has moved towards deleting, too. BTW: Depends deletion (like closing) just on the number of votes or is always a mod necessary for this?
    – Hauke Laging
    Commented Mar 2, 2014 at 17:24
  • @HaukeLaging >20k users can delete answers also, see here.
    – terdon Mod
    Commented Mar 2, 2014 at 17:35
  • I agree. That was a stupid answer.
    – mikeserv
    Commented Mar 4, 2014 at 21:57
  • 1
    @mikeserv no worries, happens to the best of us :)
    – terdon Mod
    Commented Mar 4, 2014 at 22:00
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    Among whom I am not one, but, in fairness, it was a pretty stupid question. I can't say I agree completely with the taboo on asking for clarification; too often the best way to teach is to ask. Socrates thought so, anyway.
    – mikeserv
    Commented Mar 4, 2014 at 22:03
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    @mikeserv there is absolutely no taboo on asking for clarifications. That's exactly what comments are for, the point is that answers should not be used in this way.
    – terdon Mod
    Commented Mar 4, 2014 at 22:03
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    Touche, terdon. And thanks for the correction.
    – mikeserv
    Commented Mar 4, 2014 at 22:05

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