VLQ flag declined

Question

Some time ago I VLQ flagged this answer and it wasn't disputed, but declined right away..?

Can a VLQ on an answer be declined (the actual reason was declined - flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention) instead of being disputed (or accepted) or was this just a mistake? Actually I didn't want a mod to intervene and didn't use the mod attention flag.

How can I avoid flags being declined for this reason in the future if this is intentional and I only want to flag a post to get into the normal review queue?

Answer 1

Try adding a comment to the question explaining what is wrong with it. Something like

"This doesn't seem to add any info to the existing answers, could you expand your answer?"

Most times I see dupe answers is when I'm in the VLQ queue and someone has left a comment similar to that, which lets me know I should check to see if it is a duplicate answer. Then I can appropriately downvote and/or vote to delete. Those who don't have deletion privileges can recommend deletion instead, but the comment should let anyone who is reviewing the answer to look at the other answer and see if it is a duplicate.

As far as I know, downvoting and/or voting to delete a new answer can send it to the VLQ queue without a flag, but I don't know for sure. For the VLQ flags behavior specifically, it will drop an answer into the regular queue if it hasn't been there before (if it has, it goes straight to mod queue). After 15 minutes it gets dropped into the mod queue if it hasn't been handled yet in the regular queue. VLQ flags can't auto delete, but can be validated by regular users by either 6 recommended deletions or 3 deletion votes or a combination of the two. Note: if enough reviews say it looks okay, the flag will be disputed instead of declined.

See here for descriptions of how all the queues work.

Answer 2

When a flag is declined with a reason like that, it means a moderator manually handled your flag. In this case, the description explains why the moderator declined it.

An answer that makes an attempt to answer the question but isn't very good isn't flag-worthy or delete-worthy. You should downvote it, but we don't delete those outright. This is a situation where you could take the correct action without involving a moderator at all, hence the decline reason that you received.

VLQ flags are meant for answers that are patent nonsense, like a cat walked across the keyboard, or that are incomprehensible so you can't even tell if it's trying to answer the question or not.

VLQ flags show up in the moderator queue, so they are likely to be seen and handled by moderators. I'm not actually sure how VLQ flags interact with the normal low quality queues. To my knowledge VLQ can't lead to auto-deletion like spam flags, however.