Can we have a way to undo a flag? [duplicate]

Question

I know there is already a question about undoing a comment flag. However, that question was before there was the concept of flag weight.

I flagged an answer for attention because it contains both A. a copyright notice, and B. a substantial amount of code. I wanted a moderator to take a look at this. However, I also left a comment to the OP explaining that SO's posts are under CC-wiki, and that he had (possibly inadvertently) released his source code under that license.

Now, since I flagged, the OP has confirmed that he did intend to release his code as CC-Wiki, and therefore the flag I placed on the answer no longer is really valid. I want to remove the flag, but there does not appear to be a way to do so. A moderator who does the "right thing" is going to mark my flag invalid, which will negatively affect my flag weight (even though I've realized the bad flag before it ever got to a moderator). It would be nice if I could remove my own flag from the moderator's queue (and therefore not negatively affect flag weight).

Answer 1

There's another reason for making it possible for people with sufficient rights to remove a flag they placed: Saving the moderators' time.

Moderators have a lot of flags to get through. If you flag something, and then something changes making it no longer relevant before it's reviewed, you should be able to remove the flag so no one needs to review it.

Recently I flagged a question that had been deleted by a moderator with the reason "too localized" because the question wasn't too localized (in my view, or apparently the view of the many others who had viewed it and not voted to close it). After I did that, the moderator edited the question saying that they'd deleted it because the OP asked them to (the OP couldn't, it had answers). So I wanted to remove my flag, as it served no purpose, and a moderator didn't need to spend time on it.

Similarly, I have sometimes flagged something "not an answer" which was, when I flagged it, not an answer — which then got edited and became an answer. So again, no point in a moderator reviewing that flag.

And yes, in both cases it would be nice not to have flags "declined" because while they were valid when I made them, they became invalid and I noticed them. I'm not going to worry about that part too much, although it does rankle slightly.

In general, engineering is about balance. If you have an "add" feature, prefer to have a "remove" feature. If you have "up", expect you'll need "down". Violating this rule, creating an unbalanced system, should only ever be done intentionally and for very good reason.

Answer 2

A moderator who does the "right thing" is going to mark my flag invalid

I don't really agree with this. Why would it be invalid? If I see in the comments that this worked itself out, I would probably mark you flag as valid. The concern was valid, the flag was submitted with good intentions. Things worked out without moderator action, but that doesn't mean that the flag wasn't valid at one time.

Even if your flag is dismissed for being invalid, it isn't the end of the world, and flag weight is just a number.

I think the case for wanting to remove a flag is pretty limited, not sure it needs to be added to the UI.

Answer 3

Another reason is just changing your mind, you find out you're wrong, or you learned something new since flagging something. For example, I flagged a post for migration just a little while ago, simply because it was Drupal and on SO. Immediately upon flagging it I started thinking, "Are we supposed to be migrating things simply because they're Drupal? Or is the preferred action to let sleeping dogs lie?" So I came to Meta, looked it up, and see that we shouldn't just be flagging for migration just because there's a SE site dedicated to the topic. So I know I won't do that again, but I still have a flag out there that a moderator has to look it eventually. There's really no reason for them to look at it since I know now that the flag is wrong.