Should gibberish posts be flagged as abusive or just downvoted and deleted?

Question

Note: This is quite a long post. Feel free to scroll down to the highlighted part where my actual question is. If you find out that you want more information on these types of flags, you can read the first part where I did my best to collect the relevant information.

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Occasionally it happens that I stumble upon posts where the contents is something like "asdfj ewerepqjf sl qwerqwerqwef 14jljk". They might be caused by cat on a keyboard or somebody might post them by mistake, not even realizing that they inadvertently made a post. Or the reasons might be less innocuous. For example, somebody might bump their post using another account created just for this purpose. Or this might be expression of a frustrated user reacting in somewhat disruptive manner.

When seeing such posts, so far I followed the FAQ from the main meta saying that such posts should be flagged as rude or abusive. Here is the quote of relevant paragraph: "It contains only gibberish, such as “fsdguejgkfdlk”. Use the rude or abusive flag for these cases, or flag for moderator attention with a custom explanation if it requires more detail."¹

If enough people flag the post as rude/abusive, the post is deleted and the content is hidden. (It is only visible after you click on revisions.) I have noticed, that often gibberish post on this site are deleted, but the content not hidden. As far as I know, this means that they did not get enough rude/abusive flags. A few examples are posted below.² (I have posted them just to show that this really sometimes happens. You can ignore them and take my word for it. I do not know about any efficient way how to find such cases, but I do not think that providing more examples is needed here.)

I am aware that if a post gets enough spam or offensive flags, that has some repercussions for the poster. Again from FAQ: "6 flags (spam or rude or abusive): post is locked, deleted, and the author loses 100 reputation." And there might be some other penalization which I am unaware of. I guess enough of them might lead to notifying moderators who might decide to suspend or delete account.³

So I can kind of understand the sentiment who could say: "Perhaps it is better to do something which do not influence the user so much for some minor offence. I'll just use NAA flag, or downvote, or vote to delete the post." I often have doubts about this as well, but since this seems to be the official policy of SE network, I have used rude/abusive flags in such situations.

After this long introduction, I can finally say what my questions are:

• Did I understand correctly that if I see a deleted post where contents is not hidden, it was not deleted based on offensive flags? (I.e., did I correctly interpret the examples I posted below?)
• What is your opinion on this issue. Should gibberish posts be flagged as rude/abusive or should they just be deleted? (I know what the official SE policy is. But people using this site might have opinion differing from official policy. If there are some reasonable arguments against flagging these post in this way, I will be glad to hear them.)

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¹ The reasoning why such posts are considered abusive is given in the same FAQ entry as follows: "Abuse of the system or community is everything that is created with the intention to harm them. This includes posts that contain no useful content at all – i.e. gibberish posts along the lines of: asyuv;laergap897wertp[98 gb;vp98a34. Cats are not allowed to walk across keyboards as part of Stack Exchange posts; this is abuse and should be flagged as such. (Source)"

² For users with privilege to see deleted questions:

• Examples of gibberish posts which where not hidden: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

• These gibberish posts are also not hidden, but they come from orignally sensible post, which was later edited - so they are somewhat different 1, 2

• Examples of gibberish posts which where hidden: 1, 2, 3. 4. 5

³If somebody can confirm with some official source whether enough offensive flags can lead to account suspension or deletion, let me know in the comments and I will add the information into the post.

Answer 1

Regardless of any "official stance", I feel that the most important point to keep in mind when faced with these posts is given in Shog9's linked answer

The important thing to remember here is that when the post clearly means nothing, you shouldn't be wasting too much thought trying to decipher it; flag it and move on with your life.

That is, don't overthink it. In the same answer Shog9 states

So pick the flag that speaks to you. I'm partial to "rude or abusive", because enough of them immediately delete and lock the post, which is handy in those rare scenarios where someone's flooding the site with a lot of these... But VLQ or NAA work just as well in the vast majority of cases.

That is, flagging as "rude or abusive" is a valid repsonse — but not the only valid response — to these posts. (I'll note that this answer by Shog9 is the "Source" for the "[gibberish] is abuse and should be flagged as such" idea of the FAQ, even though Shog9 doesn't express this nearly so absolutely.)

I am personally of the opinion that gibberish posts fall squarely under the "very low quality" definition:

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

Flagging as such will put the post in the Low Quality Posts review queue, meaning that it will be seen by users with the ability to get rid of it. As far as I can tell flagging as "rude or abusive" does not place posts in the review queues, and so this method relies on enough users coming by and flagging the post independently. (Sure "rude or abusive" flags immediately show up in the moderator flag queue, but we're not always around. And Smoke Detector often catches them and posts to the C.R.U.D.E. chat room.)

When you can, slapping a downvote and delete vote on these posts is also a good move.

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As far as these "automunged" posts are concerned, your interpretation is basically correct. If the contents of a deleted post have been hidden, then it has accumulated enough spam or "rude or abusive" flags to be deleted that way. Otherwise a deleted post have been deleted by normal means: enough delete votes, or enough "recommend deletion" votes in the review queue. See the "Spam and Offensive Automunging" section of the December 2013 Moderator Newsletter.

Answer 2

Before I actually answer I will confer an observation from earlier discussions, actions, etc.

Many a user are eager to flag such posts (and even lesser evils). Yet if not instructed otherwise, and some even then, they'll flag it as spam. Like, that's a non-sense/worthless post, spam-flagged.

This should not be done as spam-flags should only be use for spam in the narrow sense of advertising a product or service. Being consistent there has some relevance as data gathered from these flags can be used to auto-prevent future spam. Otherwise the mechanics of the flags "spam" and "rude or abusive" are the same, also regarding the penalty on the user.

I feel the recommendation to flag as "rude or abusive" can also be seen in part as a stop-gap against this. 'If you need to flag, you can do so, but please, use this flag and not spam.'

In my opinion there is a scale, as discussed in the question. Posting gibberish can and often is an innocent mistake or likely even more often minor carelessness or lack of consideration. (Like: Okay, so how does this site work. I type my text here:'sjfkfjdfjld qkdjqkljfkljfkdl' and then, right I need to press that button. {Click}. Oops. How, can I delete this? I can't?! Oh well...)

It can be an outburst of frustration. It can be gaming the system (to bump the post). It also can be part of a pattern behavior to disrupt the workings of the site or to harass a (group of) user(s).

What it is can not be decided based on the post alone, but only given the context. Use your best judgment, and even then there is a decision to be made. I proceed like this:

• The post is gibberish and I believe the context is harmless: NAA/LQ flag, vote to close/delete.

• The post is gibberish and I believe the user is willfully disruptive: rude or abusive flag.

Put differently, decide what you do based on whether you believe it is justified a point-penalty is inflicted on the user for having posted the post.

It may also worth noting that moderators can undo the point-penalty, thus also opening a way to appeal.

Finally, many a gibberish post comes from throw-away 1-point accounts, where the penalty is somewhat moot anyway.