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I'm still having trouble understanding when the "Not an Answer" flag should be used.

I recently flagged a couple of answers to Is there a short Daf Yomi shiur online in English? as not being an answer, where the question asked was (emphasis mine):

There is a short, 10-minute daf yomi shiur in Hebrew here : and I was wondering if there is anything comparable in English. I'm looking for a Daf Yomi shiur online that is significantly shorter than the normal 45-60 minutes.

The answers that I flagged (and downvoted) were all regular, ~45 minute Daf Yomi shiurim, which the OP expressly wasn't looking for, and don't answer the question at all, sometimes even acknowledged by the answerers themselves! One answer read (emphasis mine)

...He is amazing, one of my favorite teachers. However, it is not necessarily so short, since he likes to bring the opinions of many different Rishonim.

Another answer:

He is extremely interesting and covers the daf with rishonim in about 45 minutes.

I commented on some of these (but not all of them) on the spot, yet my flags were still declined.

Why is it that these are considered answers to the question, if they don't (attempt) to answer it?

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    Note that an answer that doesn't quite fit into the conditions set forth in the question might still be valuable if it first states that there aren't many things that do fit the conditions.
    – Alex
    Commented Jul 19, 2019 at 22:07

2 Answers 2

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On https://judaism.stackexchange.com/a/18898 and https://judaism.stackexchange.com/a/17458, I declined your not-an-answer flags, because I hadn't read the question carefully enough before doing so and therefore hadn't realized the question had asked for only shorter-than-45-minute classes. Sorry about that. Though you shouldn't have to, it might nonetheless be worthwhile commenting before flagging not-an-answer, indicating why it's not an answer, if it's not clear.

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  • Thanks, those were the only ones that I raised there (although I'm not sure why I skipped a couple of others), which kind of makes this Q/A deletable. Thoughts?
    – רבות מחשבות
    Commented Jul 18, 2019 at 14:43
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    I think this page can be a worthwhile resource for the MY community.
    – msh210 Mod
    Commented Jul 18, 2019 at 14:44
  • @רבותמחשבות I just went and deleted a bunch of them.
    – Isaac Moses Mod
    Commented Jul 18, 2019 at 14:49
  • @isaac thanks!! Although you deleted one which offered notes on place of a shiur, but left Monica's which did the same...
    – רבות מחשבות
    Commented Jul 18, 2019 at 14:56
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    I have to admit ... this is definitely not an answer. OP asked why the flagging "not an answer" leaves things as an answer, and all you've done here is apologize. I also am apologizing for my having to offer my opinion :-) But, I'm not flagging your answer, because I'm being nice.
    – DanF
    Commented Jul 19, 2019 at 20:53
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I agree with your flagging here. Especially in -type questions like this one, which are naturally prone to collecting many answers, it's valuable to make sure that all of the answers at least meet the minimum bar of fulfilling the requirements set out in the question. That helps keep the response-set manageable and on-target.

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