Why are flags for demonstrably false answers rejected?

Question

This answer is not only demonstrably false as US labor laws vary drastically from state to state, and asking to go directly to the VP of HR is going to be disastrous for anyone naive enough to think that such a thing wouldn't be career suicide.

When I flagged it, it was rejected for the reason "declined - flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer"

So, my question is Why?

Would Pets Stack Exchange allow an answer for a tick treatment question to stand if it said "Put the animal in boiling water for 30 seconds, and there will be no more fleas" stand, or would they delete it?

While I do understand that much is a matter of perspective, but when it comes to something so blatant, why let it stand?

Answer 1

flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer

Well this basically answers your question but I guess you're trying to get at the motivation behind it. There's no one-size-fits-all answer to that from what I've found, though this meta post covers the basics.

Generally put, as moderators we should not judge answers for "correctness". We are a small team of exception handlers that deal with things the community can't handle. The community can and indeed should handle bad answers. Downvotes and comments are the tools at your disposal for that. Flags are not, at least generally speaking.

One thing to add here is that this practice originated with the more technical sites. A moderator mainly active in Java and front end design wouldn't be able to handle questions around compilers or low-level programming. It makes no sense to let them judge how correct an answer is. This is somewhat different on The Workplace of course. Though even here it's hard to judge matters related to specific country/state law for instance. That's also an area where the moderator handling your flag might not be well versed in. If the OP says the law is X while the flagger says the law is Y instead, it's not up to the moderator to make a final call. Instead the flagger should leave a comment and downvote and allow the community to take it from there, presumably leading to more downvotes and potentially deletion votes.

When flags like this reach us it's always a judgement call. There are instances where we delete these. Typically when criminal behaviour is involved in an answer or anything similarly "over the line". Advice that would get someone fired will sometimes rise to that level as well, but most moderators will prefer to leave those calls to the community. In cases where the post is already downvoted or it's otherwise clear that it won't do more harm we tend to decline the flag because the community has already handled the post.

There is actually a very good example of such an answer on that same post. This deleted answer advocated violence in the workplace. It would have been nuked on sight if a moderator had spotted it before the community deleted it. But even there the community was faster than us in getting the post removed. :)

Hope that answers your question, but let me know if I should elaborate on anything.

You could also check out:

• How do I properly use the "Not an Answer" flag?
• declined - flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer
• https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4731/dont-flag-wrong-answers
• https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/265552/when-to-flag-an-answer-as-not-an-answer

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Answer 2

So, my question is Why?

The answer has a score of -3 and is grayed out, which is a strong indicator to visitors that they shouldn't follow this advice. In fact, the answer adds value to the site precisely because the site is showing it's a wrong answer, similar to tutorials or textbooks sometimes showing what happens if you don't do the correct thing.

Answer 3

Cross-site duplicate: Are blatantly wrong answers very low quality?

If the answer is wrong, you shouldn't flag it, you should downvote and comment explaining why it's wrong.

Wrong answers can still be useful to the site (as long as they're downvoted and people comment explaining why they're wrong) because they can serve as a warning to others. I recently encountered a case where the accepted answer on a Stack Overflow question recommended a dangerous practice; I downvoted, commented on the answer explaining why it was dangerous, and wrote another answer explaining what the OP should do instead. The accepted answer actually illustrated a common mistake (one that I've made myself before) because it's a "gotcha" in the framework. My answer got upvotes and the other answer got downvotes and will now hopefully serve as a warning to others about what not to do.

As one high-rep user said,

SO has entirely too few bad answers. Knowing how not to solve a problem is pretty valuable.

Answer 4

Mods aren't omniscient. They're not expected to be, which is what you're asking if they're supposed to judge answers as wrong.

If you see an answer you believe is inaccurate or incorrect, there are plenty of things you can do. You can downvote it, you can comment on it to explain to the answerer and viewers that you think it's wrong, or you can post your own answer or upvote correct ones.

Since a lot of people are throwing examples of "obvious bad answers", I'll address the clear strawman- there is a difference between good faith though misguided and bad-faith trolling. If there are examples of mods leaving the latter around, that's a different discussion.