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I flaged this answer as "Not an answer" due to the answer trying to explain product activation, where the question is about the process of performing the install.

The description for "Not an answer" is the following:

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.

I felt that the answer "does not attempt to answer the question" as it does not address how to install windows 8, so I flagged it. However, that flag was denied:

declined - flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer; vote down and/or leave a comment

I think that the phrase "it does not attempt to answer the question" needs to me removed or re-worded if that is not what the flag is for.

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  • Related topic
    – Daniel Beck Mod
    Commented May 3, 2013 at 16:45
  • @DanielBeck would this be considered a dupe of that post?
    – James Mertz
    Commented May 3, 2013 at 16:53
  • Actually, after reading the other post, I agree with you @KronoS. I am the first to flag this as duplicate. I don't want to delete as I feel you gave a good answer already to this question.
    – Scott Chamberlain
    Commented May 3, 2013 at 16:55
  • @DanielBeck You can also tag this as As-design, after reading the FAQ meta post I understand that now.
    – Scott Chamberlain
    Commented May 3, 2013 at 16:59
  • 2
    Here's also something interesting: The wording of the flag was changed half a year ago to better match how it's handled by moderators.
    – Daniel Beck Mod
    Commented May 3, 2013 at 17:05

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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"it does not attempt to answer the question"

Attempting to answer the wrong question is still answering the question. Meaning that if they misunderstood the question, or answered it completely wrong, it's still trying to answer the question and needs to be left alone or (if absolutely terrible looking) flagged as "very low quality".

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  • If that is so, my flag should not have been denied.
    – Scott Chamberlain
    Commented May 3, 2013 at 16:49
  • No your flag should've been denied. It was flagging an answer as "not an answer" but really was, even though it was a wrong answer, it still was an answer to the question. If you felt that it was "very low quality" then you should've flagged it as such. However that would've been denied as well (in this case) as the quality of the answer isn't bad either. Again, the answer may be completely wrong or inaccurate, but it's still an answer none the less.
    – James Mertz
    Commented May 3, 2013 at 16:52
  • I misinterpreted your answer after the quote. With your first sentence I thought you where arguing the opposite point. I reworded that first sentence, you can change it back if I am still wrong.
    – Scott Chamberlain
    Commented May 3, 2013 at 16:57
  • 2
    One of the reasons for this policy is simply that you can't always have moderators evaluate whether an answer is correct or not. We can easily delete obvious things like spam, follow-up questions and their likes, but actually reading and understanding the entire question and then figuring out whether the answer addresses the problem sometimes requires technical knowledge which a moderator might not have for every topic. Finally: In the case of that answer, at least three users saw it, but nobody downvoted the post, even though they thought it was not useful. (cc @scott)
    – slhck Mod
    Commented May 3, 2013 at 17:03

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