40
Scope
As I see it, there are five types of invalid answers:
Answers that produce incorrect results.
This is the most common type, and usually an accident.
Answers that produce correct results, but break a rule of the challenge, ignore parts of the spec or violate a loophole.
For example, answers that make use of banned built-ins fall into this category.
...
28
Flag, don't vote to delete
If three people vote to delete it before six spam flags get through, then the post will have to be undeleted before it can continue to be flagged. If six flags get through, that post is deleted and locked by Community (and gets its content shoved into the revision history), which will also remove 100 reputation from that user (...
20
Thanks for posting to meta about this; I was the one who declined those flags. I declined them primarily because it appeared that they were flagged based on an automated comment search—they were all extremely old comments (from 2011) that began with the same two characters +1.
While I would have deleted the comments if there had been only one or two flags ...
18
Marking an answer Community Wiki does not excuse it from this policy
Introducing an answer with "I know this doesn't follow the rules but I worked hard on it so I want to post it here" is not an acceptable excuse.
Saying "I've marked it Community Wiki so I won't get any rep from it" does not change the fact that it is taking up space meant for valid ...
17
The new policy should apply to answers that predate it
If the community decides to remove invalid answers (and it certainly looks like it right now), that policy should apply to all answers. Reasons for this include:
We are not changing the rules.
For a policy that invalidates previously valid answers, retroactive application wouldn't be entirely fair, ...
12
Delete old posts immediately
I would like to also suggest the option of deleting invalid answers immediately on flagging only if there has been more than a year and a half since the last edit, with new invalid answers given more time (2 days seems to be the working number).
Older answers are less likely to have an active owner, and don't lose rep when ...
12
Give users time
Wait until it's been 2 days since the user was notified that their submission is invalid to delete the answer.
For example, if someone commented that an answer is invalid in 2016 and it was only flagged now, remove it.
If someone comments that an answer is invalid (which the answerer did not previously know about) and immediately flags it, ...
12
Yes, feel free to flag those comments whenever you see them. The important part of your question is
if proper credit is given
I'd hesitate to delete a suggestion if that leaves no trace of who actually came up with it.
11
It seems we need a sort of guide for flagging, so...
spam / offensive: self-explanatory
NAA: for posts that do not attempt to solve the challenge (examples: "I like llamas," "Wow, interesting challenge," "user12345's answer is invalid," "This challenge is boring," "I don't know, but here's a starting point for others," etc)
VLQ: for posts that (attempt to) ...
10
"Not an Answer" flags are for posts that make no attempt to answer the question. They are usually things like:
I have the same problem
Have you seen my glasses?
Check out this great new product!
Neither of your examples qualifies as "Not an Answer." If you believe the answer is hurting the site, cast a custom moderator flag instead, and explain in your ...
9
Yes, but don't be hasty. Even after the author edits the question in response, the comments are still valuable in certain scenarios:
The question was closed as unclear (or is headed that way). In that case, as someone who uses the reopen review queue I want to see the comments because they help me understand why the question was opened and to form my own ...
8
Most of the flags were cast on thank you replies to suggested improvements, which had been incorporated and acknowledged in their respective answers. Neither the thank you comments nor the original suggestions served any purpose anymore, so I deleted them.
However, the answer of one of the comments did not mention it at all. While I'm not sure the thank you ...
8
I've handled those three flags nine days ago.
I don't actually remember declining them, but looking at the comments and the post, it was clearly done by mistake. The comments should have been deleted, the flags marked helpful.
Sorry about that.
7
First off I did reject the two flags at the bottom for the exact reason that @ASCII-only suggests in the comments:
For this specific case, I believe self-answering is a very non-obvious thing, so for the vast majority of users, it would be useful information. Regardless, it's certainly very obvious that it's not just a "wow, very impressive". By ...
7
Not the flag-marker, and I by no means represent the community's customs, rules, or attitudes, but I feel like a comment suggesting an improvement to an answer here sort of represents part of the story of how that program got golfed to where it is, rather than fixing some factual error or typo in the body of a question. So regardless of whether or not the ...
7
Delete it immediately
Comment on and remove the invalid answer immediately, and let the user fix it and flag for undeletion if they decide to.
7
Your link was "flagged".
This happens when a user clicks the little "flag" button, near the star and reply button. They found the picture offensive, flagged it as such, and other moderators and 10k+ rep users agreed with that.
It's marked as "Community" deleting it, because it requires multiple people to approve to flag and they're supposed to be ...
6
My best guess is that the handling moderator misunderstood your text as meaning that this was your third flag, because I think the comments are definitely pointless. I regularly remove such comments.
6
First, some terminology: you weren't kicked out of the The Nineteenth Byte but got a network-wide 30 minute suspension.
The "bot" you mention – Feeds – owns the deletion resulting from six flags (or one from mod) cast on spam, inappropriate, or offensive messages. That gruesome short story certainly fits the bill.
The 30 minutes have passed and ...
3
Yes, I'd say go ahead and flag them. We like to see attribution for improvements on answers, such as golfing suggestions, but I don't think this carries over to questions. The comments on questions tend to be about clarification or making sure it complies with our standards. In that case I think once the suggestion has been incorporated into the question and ...
3
I declined your flags.
My usual criterion for deciding whether to delete comments is to see whether removing them would leave other "orphan" comments that make no sense without the comments in question. If in doubt, I usually err on the side of retention.
2
I declined your flag, as well as a number of flags on the PHP answer that inspired it.
A character glyph is an image; U+2606 happens to be an image of a 5-pointed star. Since the task is to print a 5-pointed star and the answer prints a 5-pointed char, it is valid.
Is it cheaty? Probably. Is it in spirit of the challenge? Probably not. Does it solve the ...
1
Give users a reminder
Give the user a reminder/new notification to fix it before removing it.
For example, if someone commented that an answer is invalid in 2016 and it was flagged now, leave a new comment reminding them to fix it, and delete it 2 days later if it hasn't been fixed.
If someone comments that an answer is invalid and immediately flags it, even ...
1
I found your flag by looking at your user profile (it wasn't showing up in the mod flag list for some reason). I've closed the question now.
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible