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There are several posts indicating that, generally, yes… it is considered appropriate to flag old posts that should be closed:

I would image that the key is that one should flag obvious cases, so that someone reviewing the flag has an easy decision to make.

If I am familiar with a particular tag, such that I can readily identify programming-related vs too-broad "I have no clue" type questions… it seems like it might be helpful for me to spend a few minutes periodically flagging a number of old posts on that tag/topic. It seems there must be an overwhelming volume of questions to deal with (on SO, in particular).

In terms of "taking out the trash", what is in shorter supply on SE, users who can appropriately flag posts for closing, or higher level reviewers privileged enough to do the actual deciding/closing?

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    David how do you define appropriately flag? Of course everyone with more than 100 or so flags has some declined flags.
    – M.A.R.
    Commented Jul 17, 2015 at 13:09

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SO's Close Vote queue hasn't dropped below a 5k backlog in years, so it seems clear it's reviewers that are lacking, not flaggers.

On a number of other sites, the Close Vote queue is also somewhat backlogged, though not to anywhere near the same extent. For example, Android has only 2 reviews made in almost an entire day by a single reviewer and 185 in the backlog. So the same applies elsewhere for the most part.

Some sites don't have any trouble with their Close Vote queue, but those usually appear to be younger sites that don't have as many old posts in the first place. Once again, the pattern holds: flaggers are not in particular demand.

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The general rule of thumb is: Don’t go looking for problems you can’t fix.

So yes, do go looking for problems you can fix yourself if you feel like it, but don’t go out of your way to look for stuff to flag. If you happen to come across something that needs flagging, in your normal browsing of the site, then by all means flag it, and don’t worry about how old it is.

This also applies to people who don’t have enough rep to edit directly.

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