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For this example, I shouldn't be shown marked answers when the OP has a reasonable reputation (i.e. they are not a newbie).

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I know that marked answers (even up voted ones) can sometimes be dubious, but in this case:

  • the OP has a reasonable amount of reputation
  • the question is not down voted
  • the answer has been marked as correct by the OP
  • the answer has been up voted (if done by the OP then that is even more reason to not show it here)

If that argument fails to sway you, consider it this way: what am I supposed to do here?

  • there is nothing wrong with the answer to warrant a down vote or flag
  • clicking Not sure is an inappropriate action as there appears to be nothing to be "not sure" about
  • up voting the answer simply to get to the next one in the queue is also inappropriate
  • if I cannot adequately "review" this answer somebody else will be forced into the same situation of either needlessly up voting or doing another action simply to get past it

Another possible solution would be to have a Looks fine to me option.

Edit: as per the suggestion in the comment from from Yannis, if there is a Looks good to me option, using it should not count towards the review badges (so the badge requirements do not change at all).

Further edit:

An example of the need for a Looks good to me option is this late answer. There is nothing wrong with the answer, but currently the only affirmative review action I can take on it is to up vote it - which I shouldn't do. Why not? Because there are two other answers there that could be equally valid that haven't been up voted, but this late answer will get up voted simply because it popped up in the late answer queue, in my book that is wrong.

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Post a "+1 great answer!" comment, click "I'm done" and move on ;) –  Yannis Sep 24 '12 at 10:45
...on a more serious note, why do you think that upvoting the answer is not appropriate? If you are certain it's a correct answer, upvoting is exactly what you should be doing, if not, "not sure" seems appropriate, no? –  Yannis Sep 24 '12 at 10:47
@YannisRizos I use up voting for signalling that "this answer has merit" rather than "this answer looks okay and doesn't appear to be incorrect". Up votes have to be on merit, rather than just to get it out of the queue. –  slugster Sep 24 '12 at 11:01
Voting just to get it out of the queue is certainly inappropriate, no argument there. However I think that "Looks fine to me" would be far more prone to abuse than upvoting an answer just to get it off the queue. Perhaps it shouldn't count towards the review badges? –  Yannis Sep 24 '12 at 11:09
@YannisRizos Sounds good to me - the only things that (possibly) count for the badges would be the already listed actions that light up the I'm done button, because you've had to take a positive action to tidy up a negative answer (does that make sense?). –  slugster Sep 24 '12 at 11:40
Yeap, makes sense (at least to me ;) –  Yannis Sep 24 '12 at 11:42

1 Answer 1

Funny story...*

During the internal design discussions for the Low Quality queue, the idea of a "Down vote" action was tossed around. The theory was, you're being asked to look for "bad" posts, and upon finding one should naturally either down-vote or vote to delete depending on the amount of "badness" contained therein.

Eventually, we settled on the idea that, while there may well be dozens of things a conscientious user might want to do on or around a given post, the focus of the queue was specifically on sorting out the utter crap from the legitimate (though possibly still misguided or wrong) questions and answers. If you wanted to do those other things, a link is provided to the full question page. (Ref: Why is voting removed from new review system?)

Again, that was the philosophy behind /low-quality. For First Posts and Late Answers, there's a considerably lower expectation (based on the data and our own observations) that a given post will be utter garbage - instead, it's likely to be some combination of good, bad, and the ever-present "things typed into the answer field that are not, strictly-speaking, answers".

So what do you do with this? What does "reviewing" something that's probably a valid post (though not necessary a good one) even mean?

Well sir, on Stack Exchange it means voting!

I know, I know, voting ain't all shiny and new. All the cool kids are clicking "Recommend Deletion" and "Do Not Close", or writing custom beat poetry moderator flags.

But shucks, voting is important. And now more than ever, voting is one of the most important forms of meta participation you can engage in.


Well then, here's a question for you: when would you click "Looks fine" instead of that up-vote button? So far, I've heard:

  • I don't understand the question well enough to say whether or not it might be useful to others
  • I don't know the subject well enough to evaluate the usefulness of an answer
  • I don't trust my peers not to screw this up, so I'd prefer to just remove this post from the queue before something bad happens as a result of it
  • I really just want a "not spam" button

And frankly, you should be clicking "Not Sure" in all of those cases. It's ok - it won't hurt anything. The goal here is to get enough people looking at this stuff that all but the most obscure topics will get someone involved who knows what they're looking at. You don't have to have an opinion on everything, any more than you have to be able to answer every question that shows up in your unanswered questions.

Relax... Review the posts you feel confident in reviewing, and let the rest find their way to someone else who is.

*A traditional English expression meaning, "a tedious and borderline irrelevant story"

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Heh, "funny story" also translates to "feature request declined" :) In all seriousness, for the example shown I'm well enough competent in this area (so Not sure isn't appropriate), but having said that my real point is this: just because it is a valid answer doesn't mean it automatically deserves an up vote. Up votes should be based on merit, and I cannot see the rest of the answers in order to fully gauge its merit compared to them. Up voting an answer just to get it out of the queue seems icky (it's like giving my kids a lolly to shut them up - wrong solution to the problem :) –  slugster Sep 25 '12 at 2:51
That's a fair criticism - IMHO, the "late answers" queue is probably the least well-defined in terms of purpose; it's pretty good at flushing out spam, not-answers and such on "honeypot" questions, but when it comes to legitimate answers there's a real mix of good stuff and... Well, unnecessary answers. The example you gave is probably one of the better ones - even taking the other answer into account, it's a pretty clear improvement. I still feel that this UI is an improvement over what we had, but it's not as big of a win as, say, Low Quality; I'm interested to see how it's actually used. –  Shogging through the snow Sep 25 '12 at 4:00

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