Am I misusing the "Not An Answer" flag?

Question

I have had about a dozen Not An Answer flags on this site disputed or declined. In most if not all of those cases I thought that it was pretty straightforward why the post was not an answer, and in some cases I left a comment explaining why. I would therefore like to understand where I am going wrong.

I see a few possible options:

• Some reviewers/moderators disagree with my assessments of the specific posts.
• Some reviewers/moderators disagree with the underlying premises of what makes a post not an answer.
• Some users/moderators misunderstood what the questions were asking and therefore thought the posts did constitute answers, or I misunderstood what the questions were asking and therefore thought the posts did not constitute answers.
• Some users/moderators misunderstood what the answer posts were saying and therefore thought the posts did constitute answers, or I misunderstood what the answer posts were saying and therefore thought the posts did not constitute answers.

I know from other Meta posts, both here and on the network-wide Meta site, that the second option has been subject to various debates. Particularly in this post and its follow-up post there was much discussion (including in the comments) about whether an answer post must be recognizably not an answer even without the context of the question in order to qualify for a Not An Answer flag. on this specific Meta site there have been at least two general discussions (here and here) about what makes something not an answer, and (to my understanding) the top answers to both assume that an answer post has to specifically address the specific question asked in order to qualify as an answer.

However, the parameters of that are still somewhat vague. Answer posts can look like actual answers to a question because they discuss the topic in general, or related issues, or cite many sources, yet still don't actually tackle the question head on. Particularly in the comments here there seems to be some confusion about answers that address a question's title but don't actually address the elaborated version of the question in the body of the post.

Here are a bunch of examples:

• Spell Propagation Speed? asks about the speed at which spells travel from the caster to the object being acted upon. This answer discusses the speed at which the acted upon object travels back to the caster. At a quick glance it seems like an answer. It discusses the general topic and it cites an authoritative source, but it doesn't appear to address the actual question that was asked. My flag there was disputed.

• Why did Dumbledore place a guard for the prophecy at the ministry? asks how a single guard for the prophecy would be of any value. This answer explains why Dumbledore wanted the prophecy to be protected in the first place, but does not discuss the value of a single guard. My flag was disputed (though the answer was eventually deleted by the owner).

• Why did Voldemort need to get the prophecy from the Ministry? asks why Voldemort needed to get the prophecy from the Ministry if he had already gotten it from Snape. This answer explains why Voldemort needed the prophecy at all, but does not address why he had to get it if he already had it. My flag was declined as: flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer. In fact I do not think the answer is wrong or inaccurate; it's just an answer to a different question.

• Should Quirrell Have Survived Harry's Touch? asks why Quirrell died if he had unicorn blood that should have protected him. While this answer talks about Quirrell and cites sources, making it look like an answer at a glance, it does not address why Quirrell died. My flag was disputed.

• Why did Harry Potter take place in 1981? asks why Harry Potter took place when it did. This answer explains how we know that it took place when it did, but offers no explanation as to why.

There are more examples, but I don't think it is necessary to list all of them. A common denominator that I see here is that it is not immediately obvious that these answer posts do not actually address the question. If you only look at the answer post, or look at the answer post after a quick glance at the question title, the answer posts seem relevant. But (at least in my opinion) once you carefully read the questions you see that these answers don't actually address the specific points being raised.

So, what is actually going on here? Am I missing something that makes these types of answer posts actually considered to be answers? Or are there simply reviewers not reviewing carefully enough, or perhaps reviewing on topics that they don't know enough about to evaluate the answers? Either way, what if anything should be done?

Answer 1

The Not An Answer flag has nothing to do with whether the answer answers the question. It has to do with whether the answer is an answer. That is, was the person posting it at least trying to answer the question, even if they got it completely wrong.

In general, the following things do not fall under the NAA flag, because they all represent a misunderstanding on the answerer's part, and not an intent to post garbage:

• Answered a different but similar/related/tangential question
• Answered the question based on a flawed understanding of it
• Answered the question with flawed evidence or no evidence
• Just flat out gave an incorrect answer.

The NAA flag is intended for posts that are not answers -- to anything. Rants, should-be-comments, follow-up questions, meaningless rambling, your favorite pet theory, etc. And as always with SE, we are supposed to presume good intentions unless there's clear evidence otherwise.

As far as I can tell, none of those answers you cited meet that bar. The author may have been completely off base -- which is why we have downvotes -- but I see no evidence that they didn't think they were answering the question.

Answer 2

It was already mentioned in comments that "disputed" and "declined" are slightly different things: for this type of flag, "disputed" means the community voted not to delete through the review queue while "declined" means a moderator manually declined your flag. You've only ever had one NAA flag declined, which was the flag I recently declined on this answer:

• Why did Voldemort need to get the prophecy from the Ministry? Here the question is, in its entirety, "Snape had already delivered the entire prophecy to Voldemort while still being a Death Eater, so why did Voldemort need to get the prophecy from the Ministry?" and the answer is, in its entirety, "He needed it to know how to kill Harry." This is, in fact, essentially the correct answer, just not properly explained or backed up and without the extra information which proved part of the question's premise wrong. It's a very poor answer, but it is an answer.

The other flags you mention were disputed by the community, so I'll just link you to the relevant Low Quality review tasks without trying to explain the reviewers' reasoning. After moderator review and/or further flags, all four of these have since been deleted.

• Spell Propagation Speed - review task (Looks OK x 2)
• Why did Dumbledore place a guard for the prophecy at the ministry? - review task (Looks OK x 2)
• Should Quirrell Have Survived Harry's Touch? - review task (Looks OK x 2, Recommend Deletion x 2)
• Why did Harry Potter take place in 1981? - review task (Looks OK x 2, and both reviewers explained their decision in comments)