I've had a couple of flags declined which has made me wonder if I fully understand the use of particular flags on Arduino:SE, so I'm going to post this as a question here in the hope of getting some guidance.
Flag: Not An Answer
A little while back, I flagged this answer as Not an Answer since it doesn't appear to make any attempt to answer the question that the OP had actually asked. The guidance for the flag states:
This was posted as an answer, but it does not attempt to answer the question. It should possibly be an edit, a comment, another question, or deleted altogether.
In this case - in my opinion - the answer posted makes no attempt to answer the question that was asked. A later (upvoted) comment seems to agree. Yet the flag was declined:
declined - flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer
Now, the answer in this case doesn't appear to be 'technically inaccurate', or 'wrong'. It just makes no attempt to answer the question that was asked!
Now, my analogy here would be if I asked how to get from London to Glasgow without using the train, and the reply told me to catch the 12:42 train from Euston. Yes, it's an answer, it may not be 'technically inaccurate', or 'wrong', but it doesn't make any attempt to answer the question that I actually asked!
So what am I missing?
Flag: Very Low Quality
Today, I flagged this answer for being Very Low Quality because it doesn't appear to be an answer to the question that was asked, although in this case it does attempt to address an 'assumption' mentioned by the OP in that question.
Now, I would say - again in my opinion - that this should have been posted as a comment on the question, rather than as an answer. However the user that posted the answer doesn't have sufficient rep to post comments.
The actual question is clearly stated both in the title, and in the body of the question, and this makes no attempt to answer it.
My first reaction was to flag it as Not an Answer since the fact that it should be a comment is explicitly given as a reason in the guidance for that flag. However, given my previous experience I thought I'd play safe and just flag it as Very Low Quality since - again in my opinion - the content problems mean that it also meets the criteria for that flag:
This question has severe formatting or content problems. This question is unlikely to be salvageable through editing, and might need to be removed.
(Incidentally, the user that posted the answer has since made it clear in the comments that they were addressing the assumption rather than the question)
Again, the flag was declined:
declined - flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer
Once again, the answer doesn't appear to be 'technically inaccurate', or 'wrong'. As before, it just make no attempt to answer the question that was asked!
So, was I wrong to flag this as Very Low Quality? Should it instead have been flagged as Not an Answer (as my first instinct suggested)? Or should we not bother flagging answers like this at all?
Clearly I am missing something, and some guidance would be appreciated here.