Automatically delete downvoted annotated posts after a period of time

Question

The moderators here make frequent use of the post annotations. We add things like "citation needed" "insufficient explanation" or other post notices to suggest to both the community and to the author of the post that we'd like to see them add something to the post.

Typically these are accompanied by a guiding comment for how we'd like to see them improve their posts.

A lot of these posts end up down voted and neglected, it would be nice if these neglected posts were automatically cleaned up by the system instead of a moderator being required to follow up on every post notice. Generally this followup doesn't happen and we are left with a bunch of posts with post notices that some are current and others are not.

I propose the following criteria for automatic deletion of posts with post notices:

• Post age > 30 days
• Post has post notice
• Post has not been edited in 30 days
• Post score <0

This was motivated by the fact that I've been doing through the old annotated posts and have mostly been deleting them as the post notice has been ignored.

Answer 1

I don't think automated deletion is the correct way here. We have a very similar issue on Skeptics, though we probably use a lot more post notices than you there.

A post notice doesn't mean the post has to be deleted, it is a warning that the post needs some work. So there should be an evaluation of the post after some time, to check if the issues have been fixed. If they have, the notice should be removed. If the issues are not resolved, the post should be deleted.

The way I'd like to handle it is with a review queue for posts with notices. This would also mean that the ability to remove post notices should be put into the hands of the community. I've proposed this feature on Skeptics Meta a while ago, somthing like this could also work here.