What should I have done with this spammy answer?

Question

I flagged this answer (now deleted, so I can't repost its whole text) as spam. I was later greeted by this message in my flagging history:

declined - a moderator reviewed your flag, but found no evidence to support it

Now, it looked to me like there was lots of evidence. The post was just a link to a software download page, and the only context given was that the software is allegedly the best. I had literally never heard of that software before, and the poster offered no guidance as to how to use it to accomplish the task. The link wasn't even formatted correctly, so it looked to me like the user didn't care about helping, just about mentioning the product. The user has only 1 rep, so it's not like they were around a while and well-meaning.

Clearly, the answer was low-quality, and bad enough to merit deletion (I think through the LQP queue). If flagging as spam was wrong, what should I have done with the post?

Answer 1

For the interested, the entire body of the answer:

Below is the best free download for full system information. http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

I have to agree that the post was low quality and did in fact deserve deletion, but the problem is that using the spam flag has some very harsh effects which could in the case of an honest (but low quality) recommendation be a bit over the top.

Spam flags train the spam filter and so may affect the users ability to post in future.

Amongst other effects:

• 3 flags on a question (spam or offensive): question is banished from the front page and all question lists except search results.
• 6 flags (spam or offensive): post is locked, deleted, and the first revision owner loses 100 reputation.
• Each flag carries an implicit downvote for calculating the post's score (it does not affect the caster's reputation).

Additionally we have the low quality block mechanism which may or may not also be fed by a spam flag. I say possibly because the exact workings are known only to the SE team and we can only guess how the block works.

So you can see that we would prefer that honest posters do not get treated unduly harshly, as they could if the spam flag were considered valid. A single valid spam flag against a user who had only just gained the association bonus through another site would effectively wipe out all their reputation on our site.

As a result you may see an occasional spam flag declined, but the answer deleted anyway. This would generally be why.

In this case I do remember having a quick look at the user but I do not believe I was the one who handled the flag. From what I saw there was no real evidence of us getting a lot of spam from Belarc and the user seemed, at a glance, to be genuine. I didn't have time to investigate further and in the mean-time another mod handled the flag.

"Very low quality" does fit here but I have my own dislike of the phrase as what constitutes very low quality is somewhat subjective.

This is a link-only answer though, which is strongly discouraged and in my opinion completely delete-worthy. Generally a custom flag with "link only answer" may well see it gone.

Answer 2

I took a closer look at the deleted answer and it doesn't really appear to be spam.

Belarc Advisor, the utility linked in the answer, is in fact a legitimate program. The post was nonetheless deleted for low quality because it contained no meaningful content beyond the link to download the software; however, a mere link is not sufficient for a post to constitute spam.

In the future, the best thing to do is probably to downvote answers like this. If it warrants deletion, flag as "very low quality" or use a custom moderator flag explaining the issue (but note that I've gotten inconsistent results with such flags).