Q:

Should humorously bad answers by known trolls be flagged?

When a user has only ever previously used the site for trolling, and then they post an answer that looks like it might be a genuine attempt to answer the question, except:

The answer is not likely to be helpful.
The answer ignores important information provided prominently in the question.
As you read the answer, it becomes more and more absurd, until you wonder if perhaps it is a work of satire rather than an attempt to provide any help.

...should such a post be flagged? Or just downvoted?
If it weren't by a known troll, I wouldn't flag it. Lots of bad answers suffer from problems 1 and 2. And 3 is pretty subjective.
Please note that I'm deliberately not identifying the post I'm thinking of, because:

I'm interested in general guidelines about this, not just applicable to the one post I have in mind.
If it is trolling, I don't want to publicize it or feed the troll.
If it's not trolling, I don't want to cause hard feelings by publicly calling out someone's post as "humorously bad."

Of course, I'll certainly provide identifying information about the post that's motivated this question, on request by a moderator.

A:

A post like you describe should just be voted down. By -3, most people get the idea and delete their own rubbish...
But there are occasionally posts that start as you've described but then descend into abuse, shouting, or long, boring, off-topic rants. There's a line where nonsense answers become harmful to the site and need removing.
Unfortunately that line is very subjective. Even between moderators, some people might be happy to let something sit at -2 on the site while another might feel deleting it is the best action for everybody involved.
It's a hard subject to quantify. I doubt any moderator would penalise you for flagging a question which is clearly junk regardless of it being harmful.

A:

No
We don't have the time or patience to play police with every single answer. That's why we wrote these flagging guidelines.
If you're uncertain, feel free to ask in our Chat room.

