Why was my post marked as "spam/offensive"?
I’m confused why my recent answer about changing an oil pan was declared as “spam/offensive.” I have experience changing oil pans, took a while to write a thoughtful response, even did extra research because I wanted to help. Honestly I felt it was a really thorough and possibly helpful answer.
In looking up the common flags, it says that marking something as spam/offensive should be used as a “last resort” and not if someone makes an innocent mistake. After earning just one reputation point, I’m down 100. It’s frustrating and discouraging, because I’ve just learned how to be a part of answering questions (after lurking for years, getting vicarious answers for issues in my IT work) and I feel like I have a lot to add as a self-taught working class woman with many years of experience fixing computers, cars, and pretty much any broken thing I come across.
I understand that there’s a serious spam issue, and that I’m new. But is attaching such an extreme “last resort” label to an answer really the way to go? Would a spam bot really go on about their own experience, ways to diagnose, the actual procedure and alternatives? Even if I did go about the answer wrong, why isn’t there any kind of feedback - an explanation, a warning, or a chance to make it better?
Is this a worthwhile discussion?