Why was this flag rejected?

Question

For my question "How many people each do Batman and Superman kill in BVS: Dawn of Justice?," this answer was posted.

This answer does not answer my question. I asked how many people Batman and Superman killed in the film. His answer just states why he thinks that Superman didn't kill one specific person in the film. It doesn't mention any of the definitive other Superman and Batman deaths. Apparently other people also didn't like it, because it currently has a score of -5.

I flagged this and gave this reasoning:

This doesn't answer the question. I asked how many people Batman and Superman killed. All he's stated is why he thinks Superman didn't kill a specific person.

I didn't select "Not an answer" because I wanted to give my reasoning for the flag.

In return, I was given this:

declined - flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention

I don't understand. Isn't not answering the question something that requires moderator intervention?

Answer 1

Deletion of non-answers doesn't have to be done by moderators.

You have >10k rep, so you have access to the Low Quality Posts review queue, where users with sufficient reputation can vote to delete answers that have been flagged as "very low quality" or "not an answer", and you must have seen posts that have been deleted by three high-rep users rather than a moderator.

When you see a non-answer (assuming it's not spam, offensive, or gibberish), the best thing to do is flag it as "not an answer". That will send the answer into the Low Quality Posts review queue, where the community can vote to delete it or not as they see fit. If you want to provide more details as to why you think it's not an answer, then leave a comment, which people reviewing the post will see.

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The above was my reasoning for declining the flag on the basis that it doesn't require moderator intervention. For the record, if it had been an absolutely blatant non-answer, I would have deleted it and marked the flag helpful, but it was enough of a borderline case that I didn't want to take binding moderator action without letting the community have a say first.

I also considered declining it on the basis of flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies or an altogether wrong answer. The answer you flagged could be seen as a partial answer, attempting to answer part of the question while not really addressing the whole of it. Personally I agree with you, and if I wasn't a mod I would have voted to delete it, but it was a borderline enough case that I thought we should allow the community to decide (and quite possibly the answer will end up deleted after all - it already has one pending vote to delete) rather than a single moderator.