6

I edited a post to help make it on-topic after I had flagged it as being off-topic.

I tried to re-flag the Q to indicate that I had made some edits, but the re-flag failed since I had already flagged the question.

When the moderators investigate my flag request, will they see that I edited after raising the flag? Or did I create more work for them and they'll have to dig into the Q to figure out what's going on? What should I have done differently?

9

The information we see is:

  1. Your username,
  2. The close reason or your message, if you flagged for moderation attention,
  3. How long ago you flagged,
  4. If you also voted to close (for question flags, and only for users with 3K+ rep), and
  5. If you posted one or more comments (just a count).

Everything else, including edits, we see exactly like you do, by visiting the post. We don't have to actually visit the post to action the flag, but AFAIK all of us do, we don't get that many flags per day (about 50 or so).

I don't know why you couldn't re-flag, I'm 99% certain that you can flag for moderation attention even if you flagged the post previously. You can't flag a question as off topic twice, that wouldn't make much sense, but you can use the custom flag as many times as you want.

You shouldn't worry (much) about re-flagging to contradict an earlier flag, although if you do you should expect at least one of your flags to be declined. However, please don't make a habit of flagging when you can edit first. It's perfectly understandable if it happens once or twice, some times the edit is not immediately evident, but if it happens all the time, you'll get on someone's nerves (and if you are really unlucky, that'd be me ;)

As for the question in question, the moderator who handled your flag did notice your edit, and even acknowledged it in a comment, all is good ;) That said, if you happen to regret another flag in the future, flag for moderation attention, and thoroughly explain in your message why you're flagging, mentioning edits and everything else that's relevant. It'd be quite puzzling to see two flags on the same post from the same user, and you'll help us understand what's going on with a clear and to the point message.

4

There doesn't appear to be any indication that the post has been edited until I click through to the post from the list of flags. I always handle flags from within the question, so I have a full context, so I can easily see that there are changes and to get a better picture of what's going on. Of course, depending on when the flag/edit happened, we see the granularity of time indicators that you see on a post until we hover over and get the full time stamp.

Personally, if you are going to edit and try to save a question, I'd hold off on flagging. The way I see it, an edit on a bad question should be one that mitigates the need to flag a post (at least in your opinion). If it's still not good enough to make it, someone else will either edit some more or flag if they can't think of a good way to make it acceptable.

0

I was under the impression that edits to a question caused flags to be revoked automatically that were flagged prior to the edit so they might not see anything.

In the future I would reserve flags for their place a "last resort" and not flag something I would be willing to edit or could edit into something better.

  • 1
    I was under the impression that edits to a question caused flags to be revoked automatically that were flagged prior to the edit so they might not see anything. No, that was never the case. And it doesn't really make sense, why would an edit invalidate a flag? – yannis Jun 26 '12 at 17:50
  • @YannisRizos if it was flagged for being off topic an edit could potentially bring it on topic, but looking back at what gave me that impression it was me misreading some things. – Ryathal Jun 26 '12 at 18:35
  • Well, an edit could potentially make a question on topic, but an edit could be simply a spelling / grammar fix, or even post vandalism. We wouldn't want to be losing flags for such edits. – yannis Jun 26 '12 at 18:43

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