Should very low quality answers be deleted?

Question

Often times in the review queue I will see a low-quality answer, in terms of content, correctness, etc. Recent example. Should I be voting to delete answers such as this? It is still an actual answer; even if it's both wrong and low-quality (other times it's just wrong, other times it's just low-quality. This one is both). It doesn't feel like "not an answer" is correct, because it is an answer. I would expect an answer such as this to receive downvotes, but not necessarily to be deleted.

Do we want to delete bad answers? If so, is there a non-subjective criteria for how bad an answer should be before it is deleted?

I am aware of the flag for this, which mentions "unlikely to be salvageable with edits". But flagging something seems different than voting to delete it.

Answer 1

The network-wide deletion FAQ address criteria for deletion:

For answers, any post that is not an answer (should be a comment, doesn't answer the question, etc.) should be deleted. Answers that are wrong or that dispense poor advice should be downvoted, not deleted.

These are general guidelines; some communities in the network may uphold more specific reasons to delete posts or not. For example, on Puzzling.SE, answers to a puzzle without explanation are subject to deletion, and some technical sites will delete answers which are not only wrong but also harmful when tried.

I'm not aware of any established modifications to this.

A couple specific things though:

• Incomprehensible answers that can't be salvaged through editing aren't answers.
• Sometimes the question may be asking for explanation, in which case barebones yes/no posts aren't answers.

I believe I'd support extending that last point slightly, to require "sufficient" explanation, e.g. a rules quote. But let's not make this about right vs wrong; if someone says "yes the rules say so", that's not a good answer whether it's true or not. So if we want to delete it based on a lack of explanation if it's wrong, I believe we should apply the same standards to similarly brief correct answers.

I really don't want us to get into the business of evaluating right/wrong via delete votes. For the sake of future readers, it's sufficient to knock an answer down to the bottom with downvotes, and possibly leave a comment about what the issue is. I know it might be even better to have it entirely gone if we're absolutely sure, but it's not always easy to be sure, and it's hard for other users to check our work if the answer is deleted.

Answer 2

Yes they should be deleted as there is no reason to keep around low quality information that is incorrect. The option to delete an answer is there so that we can help keep up the quality of the site.

In the case of the answer you referenced here it directly contradicts an existing answer that is quoting the rules but gives no supporting evidence to indicate that it is correct. In this case having two contradicting answers could prove confusing to a new uno player especially since neither of the answers actually provides a way to verify the correctness of the answer.

As for the criteria treat it like all other voting and judge for yourself. Generally I ask myself what does this answer do to the quality of the question overall when looking to delete a post.

As a side note I would like to point out that with enough reputation dealing with a flag in the low quality queue is the exact same as voting to delete it. The only difference is in the review queue it gets a special negative downvote that is part of the review queue