Flagged for length and content - incorrectly?

Question

I often see in the VLQ review queue posts that are flagged for their length and content. Often they are, indeed, very low quality, but they are valid answers. Since my options from the review queue are "looks OK" or "recommend deletion," I usually say they look OK since they don't deserve to be deleted, just downvoted.

I assume that they end up in the low quality queue because they are often very short, one line answers with no sources. But they answer the question that was asked, albeit poorly. Were I to click the "recommend deletion" option, I would be presented with 5 choices, none of which would describe the answer in question.

In short, is length really a factor of answer validity on this site? On any SE site? Should these questions be ending up in the review queue?

Answer 1

I agree the length of an answer doesn't exactly determine its quality. However, the fact of the matter is, very short posts aren't always answers. I think that because we're a smaller site, we get this less often, but on SO, low-rep users are often abusing the answer box for comments. These 'comments' are usually pretty short.

The VLQ queue is mostly automated flagging, simply based on the length of the post.

That's not to say that short posts can't be valid as well though. They might not be as great as longer answers, but OK. That's what "Looks OK" is there for.