Should posts be flagged to make have them reviewed by the community or not?

Question

I ask this because there seem to be conflicting advice coming from our mods, so I would like to have this point clarified before I flag anything else anymore.

Please do not use flags in an attempt to reach consensus through the review queues. Flags are private, you are essentially asking someone else to deal with the issue for you, and consensus doesn't really work without accountability.

from here

What you can do is:

• Flag the answer as "very low quality" and hope the people on the review queue agree to delete it.

from here

I understand that the first quote is in answer to my question "why do flags get reviewed by mods before the community queue is over", but if there is a chance that the community will not review, I do not think that "flag as VLQ and hope that the community agrees" is a good suggestion to give, since the community might not get involved.

So, should flags be used to reach consensus through the review queue or not?

Answer 1

Personally, I only ever raise flags when I want to bring something to the attention to a moderator.

My understanding of the flagged queues is and always has been that it's a way to get a question straight to the mods' inboxes. The "flagged as [whatever]" review queues are merely there to assist the latter in the event the community reaches consensus on a question before a mod hops on the site to sort things out.

Answer 2

Don't think about what the flag does; think about what it means.

Phillip's answer in the linked post concerns "what to do when an OP accepts a biased answer". It should be read as

If an accepted post is so biased that it doesn't attempt to answer the question then flag as very low quality [and hope that a moderator or the community votes to delete it.]

What the flag does is not important. Use it when appropriate to the post.

So suppose a question is asked "Is Trump the greatest president ever?".

And the accepted answer is "Go Trump 2020!!!"

The answer doesn't attempt to answer the question: Flag as "not an answer".

On the other hand answers like The one about Yemen are attempts to answer a question. So don't flag, but perhaps downvote and comment.

In other words flag non-answers, spam, rudeness. Vtc unclear and off-topic questions. Vote down bad answers, and biased answers. Vote up good questions and answers.