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Going through the late answer review queue, I came across this answer. While it should normally be helpful ('root' and 'toor' should be the default username and password from what I recall), in this case, the question specifically states that 'root' and 'toor' did not work.

Should I flag it "not an answer"? It does "attempt to answer the question". Is there some other flag I should use?

Or should I just sacrifice 1 rep for the greater good and down vote it, without leaving a flag?

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To sum up consensus while you read the duplicate that I VTC'ed this question with: Answers which are incorrect but do not suffer from being very low quality (spelling/grammar/comprehensibility/level of detail, etc.); are not offensive and do not make ad-hominem attacks; and actually attempt to answer the question being asked; should not be flagged for any reason.

The diamond moderators have enough on their plate; they don't need to contend with incorrect answers also. For that you just drop a downvote and the voting process will do its job to signal to people that wrong answers are... well, wrong. When it has a -6, would you take its advice? No? That's what I thought.

Example: If I asked, "What's 2+2?" and the answer was "I think it's 5." -- you would only drop a downvote (we're assuming here that the question and answer are significantly longer and contain more exposition than that).

If I asked "What's 2+2?" and the answer was "Unicorns are the best because their meat tastes like rainbows, so you should hunt unicorns to solve this problem", then you could flag it as "Not an answer". As long as the answer is a possible answer within the same framework of expected/possible answers to the original question, the diamond moderators should not be looking at this (unless they just stumble upon it).

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  • Thanks! That was a much clearer than the answers I see for [this] (meta.superuser.com/q/4735/360392) question. Incidentally, while the questions certainly are related (and could share an answer) I'm not sure about my post being an exact duplicate.
    – lzam
    Sep 21, 2014 at 17:38
  • The answer you asked about in this specific case is almost a corner case (i.e., I don't think it is a corner case, but it makes you wonder whether it is), because the OP asked "What's X? I know it's not Y." and the answer was "Try Y." Obviously they didn't read the question, so obviously they're wrong, but since they are trying to answer the "What's X?" with a relevant attempt (though obviously wrong, even according to the OP), I don't think it's flag-worthy. Is it an answer? Sure. It's just the worst possible answer, since the OP specifically stated it's not that. Sep 21, 2014 at 17:45

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