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If the answer is invalid without the poster's knowledge, it shouldn't be deleted without notifying the poster first and giving him some time to fix his mistake.

• Immediately flag invalid answers of type 4 as spam or rude or abusive.

• If your own answer turns out to be invalid, delete it yourself.

• Immediately leave a comment on all invalid answers that are not your own.

• Immediately flag invalid answers of type 5 as not an answer.

  If you are a trusted user, the challenge is fairly active and the answer should not get converted into a comment, consider voting to delete instead.

• Give the poster time to fix or self-delete his invalid answer of type 1 to 3.

• If a sufficient amount of time has passed (say 48 hours) or the answer was deliberately invalid, flag the answer as in need of moderator intervention, providing an explanation of why it is invalid.

  If you are a trusted user and the challenge is fairly active, consider voting to delete instead.

• If you fix your self-deleted answer, undelete it.

  If you fix your answer and cannot undelete it yourself, flag it as in need of moderator intervention, requesting its undeletion.

If the answer is invalid without the poster's knowledge, it shouldn't be deleted without notifying the poster first and giving him some time to fix their mistake.

• Immediately flag invalid answers of type 4 as spam or rude or abusive.

• If your own answer turns out to be invalid, delete it yourself.

• Immediately leave a comment on all invalid answers that are not your own.

• Immediately flag invalid answers of type 5 as not an answer.

  If you are a trusted user, the challenge is fairly active and the answer should not get converted into a comment, consider voting to delete instead.

• Give the poster time to fix or self-delete their invalid answer of type 1 to 3.

• If a sufficient amount of time has passed (say 48 hours) or the answer was deliberately invalid, flag the answer as in need of moderator intervention, providing an explanation of why it is invalid.

  If you are a trusted user and the challenge is fairly active, consider voting to delete instead.

• If you fix your self-deleted answer, undelete it.

  If you fix your answer and cannot undelete it yourself, flag it as in need of moderator intervention, requesting its undeletion.

• The answers has a negative score.

  This is a hard requirement, since even trusted users cannot vote to delete answers with non-negative scores.

• The challenge is still active.

  Trying to gather three delete votes for an answer on a question that barely gets views anymore will take a long time. The moderation tools (2k+ rep) could help with this, but barely anybody seems to use them.

• The answer should be removed entirely, not converted into a comment.

  Only moderators can convert answers into comments.

• The answer is neither spam nor rude or abusive.

  Six "red" flags will not only delete the post, but hide it in the revision history and apply a 100 rep penalty to the poster. Deleting the post via deletion votes would prevent this.

• The answers has a negative score.

  This is a hard requirement, since even trusted users cannot vote to delete answers with non-negative scores.

• The challenge is still active.

  Trying to gather three delete votes for an answer on a question that barely gets views anymore will take a long time. The moderation tools (10k+ rep) could help with this, but barely anybody seems to use them.

• The answer should be removed entirely, not converted into a comment.

  Only moderators can convert answers into comments.

• The answer is neither spam nor rude or abusive.

  Six "red" flags will not only delete the post, but hide it in the revision history and apply a 100 rep penalty to the poster. Deleting the post via deletion votes would prevent this.

Trusted users (currently 4k+ rep) can cast deletion votes on answers. In all of the above situations that suggest flagging, trusted users can also vote to delete an answer.

Trusted users (currently 20k+ rep) can cast deletion votes on answers. In all of the above situations that suggest flagging, trusted users can also vote to delete an answer.