Guidelines for reviewing low-quality posts
Posts appear in the low-quality-post queue both automatically by the system's quality heuristics and by "very low quality" or "not an answer" flags from users. On most sites, both questions and answers appear in this queue, but on Stack Overflow, only answers do, as questions are instead reviewed in Triage.
Basic workflow
First, check to see if the post is a question or an answer; it will be labeled as "Question" or "Answer" at the top. (On Stack Overflow, the Low Quality Posts queue will consist only of answers.)
Check if the post can be improved. If you can raise its quality above the threshold of acceptability, Edit it. Keep in mind that editing within the queue will be a unilateral Looks OK vote, so be careful with edits that just make minor improvements (“rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic”).
If you think that an answer does not address the question at all or is incomprehensible, choose Recommend Deletion or Delete (see common reasons below). If you haven’t left an individual comment or upvoted an existing one, consider choosing an appropriate canned comment from the list. Note that these are really just canned comments, which have no further effect.
If you think that a question should be closed, choose Recommend Close or Close.
If the above doesn’t apply, choose Looks OK. This is the correct choice for answers that aren't eligible for deletion, or for questions that aren't closeable.
If you are unsure, Skip it.
Most of the time, the reviewer shouldn't need domain expertise to perform the review.
If you have sufficient reputation to cast close votes, Recommend Close turns into Close and also casts a close vote. If you have the trusted user privilege, Recommend Deletion turns into Delete and casts a delete vote. Both reviews count the same toward the review outcome as the respective "Recommend [Close/Deletion]" reviews. (Even though trusted users can ordinarily only vote to delete answers scoring -1 or lower, they can vote to delete answers through the Low Quality Posts queue even if the answer scores 0. Answers with positive scores can't be voted for deletion, and so the button will still show as "Recommend Deletion" for trusted users if the answer has a score of 1 or higher.)
Common cases
[QA] Spam or rude/abusive posts: click the "link" to the post, and cast its corresponding flag. Do not "close", "recommend close", "recommend deletion", or "delete" in the queue. This will make sure that the appropriate penalties are levied, and as authors are able to undelete answers deleted in this queue, they can restore the spam or offensive post without a trace.
[Q] Close-worthy questions: Recommend Close brings up the regular close dialog.
[A] Comments posted as answers: This is common from users who do not have the 50 reputation required to comment, but feel they have something useful to say. Nonetheless, recommend deletion. In the exceptional case where the answer contains useful information but still makes no attempt to answer, consider flagging it for moderator attention and asking that it be converted to a comment.
[A] “Thank You” answers, “I’m having this problem, too” answers and different questions posted as answers: These are considered noise; answers must be actual answers. Recommend deletion and choose the corresponding canned comment. Consider leaving an individual comment to help with the choice of asking a new question or to recommend improvements on a possible new question.
[A] Link-only answers: These tend to break under maintenance of the linked reference. Users should be encouraged to include the essential parts of the solution in the answer's body.
Note that,only if the answer is fully worthless without the link, it actually is a link-only answer. Also, watch out for spam.
- If the information behind the link is worth having, not already included in other answers, and can be edited in, do so in quote markup (beware of copyright infringements, though).
- If the link is helpful but it’s inherently impossible to edit the information in (e.g., if the link is to a video or copyrighted image), recommend deletion. If the answer would make a useful comment, consider flagging for moderator attention.
- If the information behind the link is redundant to existing answers, recommend deletion.
[A] Answers that fail to address the question: If you evaluate the answer such, first check carefully whether there is a lack of clarity in the question that you and the answer’s author may have interpreted differently. Otherwise recommend deletion. Leave an explanatory comment in both cases.
[QA] Gibberish, or posts in the wrong language: If the post is clearly not intended to be understandable, or is not written in English or the language of the site, recommend deletion or closure as Needs detail or clarity.
[QA] Incomprehensible posts: Improve what you can and leave a comment for the author. If you can't improve anything, vote to close questions as Needs detail or clarity. Recommend deleting an answer, if what is understandable does not make for an answer.
[QA] Bad formatting, spelling, structure and language: Improve it using the "Edit" button or leave a comment to the author. If there is no other problem and the post is understandable, choose Looks OK.
[A] Wrong and unhelpful answers: If you can fix it without making an intrusive edit, do so. Otherwise, leave a comment explaining what’s wrong and possibly downvote. If there is no other problem, choose Looks OK.
