@quid Then it seems I do not understand the NAA flag. I thought it included answers that do not answer the question, which justifies calling it "not an answer". If however you and @MichaelGreinecker interpret it to mean "not even an attempt at an answer", then the NAA flag becomes useless because there is already a Spam/Abuse flag to deal with those, and even cranks' posts could be argued to be attempts at answering... So I would appreciate if you can clarify the exact meaning of NAA.
If you take NAA to mean "not a sincere attempt by a non-crank at an answer", then I accept that my flag was declined and that the NAA flag is still useful. But I just found it odd...
@amWhy I always have reasons for doing things in a certain way. In this case, I do not want to state which flag was declined (which would be by a moderator). However, I agree that perhaps I was too blunt, as I was a bit annoyed that what I thought was a 100% obviously valid flag was declined.
And I sincerely don't care if occasional mistakes happen, but due to a few prior incidents of flagging gone wrong (even at one point causing me to be unable to flag for a while) I don't wish to see a regular mishandling of flags. Though it seems that quid has a much stricter interpretation of NAA than I did, so it may be misinterpretation on my part.
1 hour later…
user131753
4:29 AM
How can it happen that this user has asked a question with 26 upvotes but his reputation is 31?
To take advantage of Snell's law, applying a limit argument: We want to find the trajectory of a light ray where the velocity on the inner and outer terrain is constant (say $v$) and the velocity on the water ($V$) tends to zero.
Assume first that $0< V \ll v$. Then, calling $R_1$, $R_2$ the inn...
@MichaelGreinecker: But I wish to ask about this post which I had flagged as NAA and it was deemed helpful. It does not seem to fall into any category that Martin's link lists, but indeed it's quite unrelated to the question.
@user21820 there are three potential reasons: 1. The mod handling the flag in that example just clicked on "delete" when seeing the flag, this marks the flag automatically helpful. 2. This is seen more as an attempt to advertise the forthcoming book than an attempt to provide a useful answer.
3. It doesn't really try to answer the mathematical question anyways and should be a comment, a standard NAA flag. Still, the post was seen as sufficiently useless that deleting it is preferable to turning it into a comment.
@user21820 As a rule of thumb: If any mathematical knowledge is required to figure out whether this is an answer or not, it is probably not a case for the NAA flag. Sophisticated trolling might be an exception, but a custom flag is preferred then. If an answer plainly sucks, click Delete.
I wasn't able to find it, but I thought we had some discussion about NAA flags before. (I thought it was in crude.) Maybe my memory is fooling me.
@MichaelGreinecker I wonder whether mods see timeline of a post differently from regular users? For example, are flags displayed there for moderators. Deleted comments, if there are some?
@MichaelGreinecker =O Please don't, as I like Martin as he is now. I hope I'm not presumptuous when I think he's much happier not being a moderator. =)
Since quid nominated me in 2014 elections, I have been following a bit more closely what actually moderators do (at least when I had the oportunity).
The more I learned about moderating, the less keen I am on becoming a moderator. (Ignoring completely the question whether I would be suitable to be one.)
@MartinSleziak I guess if you'd become a mod might actually keep you from doing the things you do now and that would be a big gap to fill. You certainly make our life easier. I was not serious about the bullying part.
The dark secrets are less exciting now. It was fun to read the deleted comments on the meta dramas of yore, but meta became much less drama-laden. Which is a good thing f course.
@MichaelGreinecker: By the way, since you and quid and Martin have pointed out that I have misinterpreted the NAA flag, could you unstar my message, since it's inaccurate?
@MichaelGreinecker If you hover your mouse over the starred message on the starboard on the right, and click the down-arrow that appears, you can then (as room owner) click "unstar".
I believe you can despite not being room owner as you're a moderator.
@user21820 yes "not an attempt to answer" is a way to put it. I could not read the subsequent discussion now so maybe what I write below is redundant: main use-cases are: A comment posted as answer-post (for lack of points, for instance). A new question posted as answer-post. Those might be neither rude, nor spam, nor low quality. It is just that somebody did not/could not use the site properly on an essentially technical level.
