Why was my "very low quality" flag rejected on this non-formatted code-only question?

Question

I recently flagged this question as very low quality and the flag got rejected. I've read posts such as "please flag responsibly" and this answer on the very low quality flag, and while this question isn't as extreme as in those examples it seems to be in-line with the flag description:

This question has severe formatting or content problems. This question is unlikely to be salvageable through editing, and might need to be removed.

• It contains no actual question what so ever except for the title. Severe content problems.
• It contains only code and that code is poorly formatted to the point of almost being unable to read it. This weighs especially heavily since the tagged language is python, a language where formatting is important. Severe formatting problems.
• The only way to make this question reasonable is to edit the entire post. Unlikely to be salvageable through editing.

Bearing this in mind I reason that the question is very low quality. Was my use of the flag wrong? Should it only truly be used when the post has nothing to do with programming or games what-so-ever (such as the farting grandpa example)?

Answer 1

I rejected it.

• There was a question there ("why does my code freeze?"); it was in the title of the post, not the body.
• There were formatting problems, but they were not so severe as to be unsalvageable. In fact, all I had to do was select all the code in the post and hit the {} button to add the missing four-space indent needed to mark it up as code.
• The edits I made were actually relatively minor, I just shortened the title, restated the question in the body, and fixed the code.

Overall the edits took me less than a minute to do. The only reason I didn't make the edits in question when I first saw your flag was because I was on a phone at the time, and editing posts on a phone is hard.

The VLQ flag is primarily intended to address posts that look like this:

hiiiiiiiiiiiiiii i hav problem game crash plzzzzz halp lolollolool iu4hiuhasufhalskhfal skufhleqr fuherlifhuqli4f8ql4fi8hlkuhfalskdfuhlasdhfalsdjf lfu4hfp 8hp 83p qrfy adhfalsdjhf

(which I made up, but is not dissimilar to posts we've had to delete in the past)

The "can only be salvaged by editing the whole thing," thing is not about whether or not you have to touch every line of a post. That's fine. It's about whether or not the edit has to rewrite the entire post, synthesizing a valid post (question or answer) from thin air.

It is true this question probably needs further work by the OP; I'd like explanation of what exactly is meant by "second start screen" and trimming some of the irrelevant code would help with the wall-of-text effect (edit: having had a chance to skim the code, I also removed everything that wasn't the second_start_screen function).

But I definitely don't think the post was beyond saving.

Answer 2

Keep in mind that the intention behind the very low quality flag is to identify posts that should be deleted, asap.

And a post should be deleted in such a fashion when it causes harm, e.g. it is spammish, or is abusive (threatening a particular community, for instance); or when it contains unintelligible content, as mentioned by Josh.

In this case, the post was in none of these categories.

There is the flag 'should be closed/unclear what you're asking', that could have been used in this case. If the author (or a member of the community) is not willing to improve the question, the question would have been deleted by the system at some point in the future.

In the case of the farting grandpa, I know the other post suggests that you should flag it as low quality; however you could also flag it as 'should be closed/Other...' and describe what you feel is wrong with the question. "[...] has nothing to do with game development." is perfectly acceptable, and the users reviewing the flag will totally agree with it.