When should 20kers vote to delete an answer? [duplicate]

Question

After a discussion with @Adamant in chat today, I realized that we're not very clear on exactly when to vote to delete an answer (or at least I'm not clear).

The privilege page for 20k gives these guidelines for voting to delete an answer:

You may vote to delete answers in the following cases:

• The answer is extremely low quality: There is little to no scope for improvement
• The answer doesn't attempt to answer the question; it may be a comment or a separate question altogether.

So what constitutes 'extremely low quality'? Is it something that isn't understandable at all? I don't think so; those can get Rude/Abusive flags. Is it NAAs? No, those have a separate bullet point.

So what exactly constitutes 'extremely low quality'? Does this answer count?

The content of the post is:

JEDI = JEsus' DIsciple; it's a biblical connection.

I, personally, don't see why this makes sense (and I'm not alone). Let's look at one of the canned delete reasons in the Low Quality Posts review queue:

This does not provide an answer to the question. Once you have sufficient reputation you will be able to comment on any post; instead, provide answers that don't require clarification from the asker.

I feel that this doesn't match up to the 'doesn't require clarification' (and again, I'm not alone).

So does this qualify as very low quality?

TL;DR: When should 20kers vote to delete an answer?

Answer 1

I'm going to be honest here:

Use your best judgment

Unless you're an actual diamond mod, your vote isn't binding. It takes 3x 20k votes to delete answers. So, even if you get something wrong it's a delete vote that's invisible to the mere mortal (you can't even see delete votes on answers until 20k, although they do confusingly show up in the 10k deletion list). Unless 2 other 20k users agree, it will just sit there (delete votes don't age away like close votes do). But the reason they gave you the power is that you've clearly done something right for a very long time. You're a long term user. You should know what a good answer looks like now.

Furthermore, the community can make an answer undeletable by upvoting it. While questions can be deleted at any score, answers can only be 20k deleted with a negative score.

Last, but not least, you can always undelete. Nothing is gone forever (only Devs can do that wizardry).

Don't delete in these cases, tho

• Rude or Spam - Flag these. When enough people flag them Mods are notified for further action. If 20k users just delete them... nothing else happens.
• Meh answers - In baseball, a tie goes to the runner. In answers, ties should go to the poster. If you can't come up with a good reason for deletion don't do it. Don't stretch to delete. Downvote bad answers and comment.

Also, if you're not aware, voting to delete in the LQP consumes 20k delete votes first. It's dumb (once you're out of deletes it just counts them as regular votes) but it's how it works. It doesn't increase your LQP vote cap either (not that it's a big deal on SF.SE)