Should we flag and delete Not an Answer posts? [duplicate]

Question

I noticed a couple of answers to the tweetable art question have been converted to community wiki. These are questions which, although interesting, didn't keep to the question requirements (the code was longer than 140 characters and additional functions were added outside the specified red, green and blue functions - which the question forbids).

I can understand why people would be frustrated at seeing answers that don't match the question, especially if they spent a long time golfing down their own submission to 140 characters... It doesn't seem a fair comparison.

However, I don't understand the approach of making these community wiki. That means the rep doesn't go to the answer poster, but the valid answers are still subject to a comparison which is not like for like, which may affect how they are received. At first glance it still may not be obvious that the invalid answers don't fit the question.

What approaches make sense in such circumstances?

Is there a benefit to making them community wiki that I'm missing?

Answer 1

Having given this some thought, I think the best approach is to both downvote and flag such answers for moderator attention. Downvoting alone has no noticeable effect when the people upvoting the image outnumber the people downvoting the code.

In this case I did flag and the moderator response was to convert to community wiki, as that was what was suggested by others at the time. Having taken time to think about this I believe this is an inconsistent approach and is unfair on the other answers.

There was an answer that was deleted

It was a picture of a cat with code that clearly did not produce it. Another answer with an image more impressive than most but only because it was produced with code not even close to following the rules has instead been converted to community wiki and massively upvoted. I think this inconsistency sets a precedent that needs to be dealt with now. It doesn't matter that the rep does not go to the poster of the answer. The answers should all contain images relevant to the question so that they can be compared on an equal footing. Otherwise this site is just a image repository.

In any question (particularly but not only popularity contests) there is the possibility of answers being eye catching but unrelated to the question, and getting net upvotes regardless of how many people downvote. The reason we need moderators is because sometimes downvoting doesn't work. The picture of a cat had net upvotes when it was deleted by a moderator. I think the same should apply equally to all questions that do not attempt to stay within the rules.

Answers that beg to get around the rules because "I don't want to waste all that effort" should be deleted to set a clear precedent. They should be undeleted only if they can later be modified to work within the rules. For this reason I believe the answer linked to should be deleted.

If you disagree, please post an answer stating and explaining your objection so there can be a consensus to give clear guidance for future cases.

Answer 2

If we are considering a significant amount of moderation power being applied to enforce this rule, I think it is important to ask who this behavior is harming.

PCCG is not a normal SE site. The average visitor is not coming here to find the "answer" to a "question". No one is going to suffer from following a "wrong" "answer" by finding a highly upvoted answer here that doesn't strictly follow the rules of the question.

Upvotes are [mostly] not finite. One wrong answer getting more upvotes does not mean that less-interesting more-valid answers will get fewer. I can upvote the pretty picture AND upvote the best solution to the challenge within the rules (and the one in my pet language, and the one with the most vowels, and...). The best valid answer will still get accepted / bountied. Good valid answers will still get upvotes.

At most, I would like to see us adopt some standard boilerplate (a Template, in wiki terms) to put at the top of invalid answers. When they are community wiki, this will be trivial to implement. When they aren't, edits will have to be approved.