We have the facility to vote to delete downvoted posts. I am not sure what the moderators actual privileges extend to, whether they can delete with a magic button or need to vote.
I have voted to delete a poor quality answer on beta and am wondering how the community feels, if we want more pro-action on low voted posts, or does the [se] system take care of this automatically with time?
example:
Moderators can delete. Technically they vote, but their vote is instantaneous and binding, so it's effectively the "magic" button in that respect. The delete vote should show up in the review queues and so prompt our higher rep users to vote.
My general preference in moderating is to give the community, as a whole, the freedom to decide these things when they're not spam, vandalism, or abuse. I realize that we participate as well, but given the "magic" button, a little more caution by us is warranted.
I am very hesitant in deleting answers that are not a clear violation of our rules.
even if the information in them is incomplete or blatantly wrong.
Benefits of bad content
Downvoted answers are - unless you changed the sorting - at the bottom of the list of answers. While they most likely don't tell you how to solve your problem, they provide information about what you shouldn't try in the first place.
After an answer has a total score of -3 it begins fading to gray. Even users unfamiliar with the SE model will figure out that this answer isn't the best one.
Users might even search for the bad solution proposed in the downvoted answer, are referred to the question and see the better alternatives proposed in the upvoted and accepted answers.
Who is qualified to control the quality?
Unless content is really, really, obviously bad - I mean offensive, spam or the like - Moderators should not be considered to be capable of judging the quality of content, especially not in those topics they have no experience with. That's what voting is supposed to do.
When saying Moderators I mean everyone with the capability to vote on deletes. Be careful if you vote to delete a question or an answer, as a non-diamond vote isn't binding it is not a big mistake to be a bit more pro-active, but still you should not throw them around.
Even wrong answers can have value, as they can highlight a common misconception that people have, which can be corrected in the comments or other answers.
If you see an answer that is just plain wrong, downvote it, explain in the comments what the problem is, and post a correct answer. Unless the answer is violating rules, there is no need to delete it. The user who posted it will often delete it him or herself once he realizes that he is losing rep from downvotes.
