Since the upgrade to MO2.0 there are some new flags, among others it is now possible to flag an answer as "not an answer."
I believe this notifies the moderators only (as opposed to having any effect upon multiple users doing it); if this is wrong please correct me.
Yesterday, or at least recently, I used this flag twice. One got approved, yet the other declined. So, I would like to get some better understanding of the views, especially of those of the moderators (in particular if this should only be a flag for them), when to flag something as not an answer.
This is the official description:
This was posted as an answer, but it does not attempt to answer the question. It should possibly be an edit, a comment, another question, or deleted altogether.
Here is a thread on meta.SO on the subject though I am not sure how relevant this is or should be.
Also, for context let me give my two flags as examples.
The approved one (answer got deleted, only 10k+ visible).
The declined one.
I flagged the former, since the information given did in no way address the question, but rather talked about something else entirely (only loosely related). I flagged the latter, since it seemed like a comment given as an answer, for lack of rep to comment, in accordance with the official description. (In particular, I was under the vague impression that now answers can be turned into comments by moderators, but perhaps this is wrong, aagain corrections welcome)
(To avoid a potential misunderstanding this is definitely not to complain about my flag being declined, but since this is a new feature I thought it would be better to discuss this here, rather than that everybody figures out by trial-and-error, which type of flagging is helpful and which is declined.)