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After reading sometimes a "why was this flag declined" question, I was wondering which is the proper behaviour in such a situation that the community wants to have. After I was unable to find some FAQ entries about this (also its unclear yet to me what is the exact difference between declined and disputed, but I don't think it matters for this question), I was wondering; and came up with the following possible actions (tinted with my opinion about them):

  • Do nothing, the moderator declining it is possibly right
  • Reflag it, [until] another moderator will get it and probably agree with you
  • Ask on meta about it and get people to speculate and spend time on it
  • Ask in the chat
  • Add a feature for declined flags that allows to give feedback to the moderator, maybe you did not fully explain why you flagged; or you flagged with the standard reasons and now want to explain it.

For the sake of discussion, here is an example if you need one to talk about:

default template class argument confuses g++?

I flagged it as "not an answer" because I think it is in no way attempting to answer the question. If at all it is a kind of "I think this buggy too and maybe for the same reason". My speculation here is that the moderator handling the flag was't at that moment fully understanding the issue involved. I find it not to be salvagable by editing, the user is no longer there, and downvoting it will likely not lead to anything as the answer is ancient.

Back to my real question: Do we have, or want to have, a guideline for users to deal with declined/disputed flags? Do we want to have a FAQ entry about that (or already have one that I missed)? And would a feature to feed more information to the moderator afterwards do anything good?

My goal for such a thing would be to free resources of people possibly needlessly answering the "why" questions, or of moderators getting the answer just reflagged. Or maybe this is just what we want, I don't know.

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    Just to clear the air on this, there were 2 flags your NAA flags and then another user marked your flag as invalid meaning they disagreed with your flag. When the moderator cleared the flag it became disputed. I was not the moderator who cleared the flag but personally would have declined a NAA flag on that. IMO it appears to be an attempt to answer the question. – Taryn Apr 24 '14 at 20:55
  • @bluefeet: Thanks a lot for looking this up. Is this behaviour documented somewhere you could link to here, or do we maybe want to do that? – PlasmaHH Apr 24 '14 at 21:10
  • meta.stackexchange.com/a/95277/165773 – gnat Apr 24 '14 at 21:32
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    @gnat: guess I was hit by the split... – PlasmaHH Apr 24 '14 at 21:37
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    The proper reaction is to move on and do not feel ashamed moderators acting poor. As a matter of my observation, moderators and the community do not seem to care. I got several flags declined and when I honestly asked about them here and here, even though the flagged posts got removed by moderators, I just got downvoted to oblivion on meta. One is apparently the guilty person if you even dare to talk about it. – lpapp Dec 26 '14 at 7:47
  • @lpapp: See one of my other questions on meta. I think the proper reaction is to realize that you are not perfectly aligned with how the community works and how it wants to react to certain things. So the proper reaction is to stop doing such things when you know that you are sometimes of a different opinion. In the case of flags it will just cost you the ability to cast flags, in case of reviews the ability to review etc. so you have to realize that SO is big enough that it can exist without your wrong opinion. – PlasmaHH Dec 26 '14 at 11:56
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    that it can exist without your wrong opinion. -> that is shocking. SO is full of crap and the community does not have enough resource to deal with it. Why do you think the close vote queue is so huge just for one? We definitely cannot miss talented and dedicated people with such arrogance as you wrote. – lpapp Dec 26 '14 at 12:01
  • @lpapp: I am just reiterating what people here told me. Either you are perfectly aligned (i.e. you never fail any audits) or you sometimes fail audits. If you do, you either adapt your opinion to be that of the community, or you stop doing reviews. – PlasmaHH Dec 26 '14 at 12:14
  • No doubt, but what I was trying to write in my previous comment is that we should not be arrogant with people who disagree with because SO seriously lacks manpower, sadly. I personally do not flag even link-only posts anymore because the risk is high to get declined. Moderators made me think this way, so I only cast votes as that involves no risk. – lpapp Dec 26 '14 at 12:16
  • @lpapp: Unless they are close votes... I see it that way: the community thinks that I am not 100% their opinion, therefore I should not do certain things. So why should I do other things? Surely if they don't like my opinion for e.g. edit reviews, they don't want me to cast votes on questions and answers or answer questions to not have my malicious opinion being spread. After all this isn't a democracy and diversity is not wanted. – PlasmaHH Dec 27 '14 at 11:03
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Do nothing

This is the correct response.

The moderator may or may not be right declining it, but reflagging it is just going to annoy us. We have enough flags to deal with without people reflagging stuff we thought we'd already dealt with.

If we made the wrong decision then someone else will probably flag it later, at which point another set of eyes will look at it and make a fresh decision. However, the fact that one moderator already declined a flag will be noted and will colour our response.

The only case I can think of where reflagging might be appropriate is where you've flagged something as offensive and the moderator disagrees. In this case it's probably not a clear cut case so reflagging as "other" and explaining exactly what you find offensive in the post will be helpful. Please bear in mind that a post deleted through offensive or spam flags hits the user with a 100 point rep penalty, so you should be 100% clear the post is offensive before using that flag.

Also as bluefeet notes in their comment if another user marks the flag as invalid then the most likely moderator action will result in your flag being marked as "disputed".

The only caveat that I would add is that if you realise you picked the wrong flag - which is why the original flag was marked as invalid - then you may have a case for reflagging. However, don't treat this statement as permission to reflag everything.

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  • Reasonable decision in order to reduce moderator workload. You say "will probably flag it later"; this may not be true for "ancient" answers that were overlooked in the past. Should the decision remain the same, regardless of the age of the flagged entity (and thus probably likelyness of future visitors)? – PlasmaHH Apr 24 '14 at 20:59
  • @PlasmaHH - yes the decision should remain the same. – ChrisF Apr 24 '14 at 20:59
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    Strongly disagree. This post says "the moderator is always right". If you've picked "offensive" from the standard reasons, there is no opportunity to explain WHY it's offensive. If the moderator fails to see why a post is offensive (as happened to me recently), it's unfair not to be able to explain the offense. Moderators do make mistakes, and there needs to be some recourse when this happens. – Dawood ibn Kareem May 3 '14 at 5:58
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    @DavidWallace Perhaps you've identified the one case where reflagging is sensible. However, you should be reserving "offensive" for clear offence live racism or hate speech. If it's borderline then a custom "other" flag might be a better option. Or just edit the post of course. – ChrisF May 3 '14 at 11:28
  • Yeah, in the end I figured that the moderator was indeed wrong, and I just edited the post myself :-) – Dawood ibn Kareem May 15 '14 at 11:38
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    @ChrisF: are "rude or offensive" flags on comments also so heavily penalized that they are only appropriate in extreme cases? That would explain why a recent flag of mine was declined, and probably means one I just placed will also be declined; should I have chosen "not constructive" instead? (They were blatantly meant to antagonize, but did not involve swearing or racism.) – Harry Johnston Sep 13 '14 at 23:53
  • the most likely moderator action will result in your flag being marked as "disputed". -> I am getting declined all the time, not a single dispute. – lpapp Dec 26 '14 at 7:59

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