In several cases, it's become apparent that a diamond mod has rushed to take action on a particular question, answer, or comment thread, because they were afraid of "losing track" of it if they didn't take action before moving on, and then the problem wouldn't be dealt with at all.
Therefore, I propose a time delay flag, "Flag for followup after n hours" (where n should be provided in options of 2, 6, 12, 24, 48, 72) so that a moderator can give the community some instruction on how to clean up / improve, then leave sufficient time before taking action. Until they come due, these flags won't appear on the moderators' flag queue at all.
This would give the moderators a way of eliminating time pressure on a particular cleanup action, give the subject matter experts in the community a chance to make edits better than a mod would, or provide input on a mod decision before it's finalized, without worrying about things spilling through the cracks.
I'm not sure whether it would be useful for the flag to come back to the same mod only, or appear in the general queue, or have an option at flag creation time. I'm of the opinion that the flag should go out to all moderators when it comes due, to increase the chance of a second opinion.
EDIT: Some examples of where follow-up would be needed:
Comments being used for on-topic discussion: Yes, those should be folded into the answer, but most diamond mods are not subject matter experts on every question they encounter. Better to give several hours for the experts to deal with it.
Plagiarism: It's better to give the offender practice in proper attribution, than just to do it for them
On-topic advertisement answers: Sometimes "this commercial product will do what you're asking for" is a great answer. But disclosure of the relationship between seller and answerer is always needed, whether that's "I sell the product", "My employer sells the product", "I've bought and used this product" or "I have no relationship with this product; I found it with a Google search". Generally only the answerer can provide that information. The mod needs to give an opportunity to add it, and some time later check back and delete the answer as spam if disclosure still isn't present.
In all these cases, final action needs to be delayed by hours relative to when the problem is identified and a comment left advising the users involved on what fixes are needed.
Summary
This question is asking for a 'flag this post in X time with Y message', which will allow moderators to follow up on a situation after there has been time for the situation to have been resolved 'amicably' by the participants. A 'follow up required' flag.
See also - numerous
Flag Delay
Can we have a feature to delay a flag for a short period of time?
This is arguably a duplicate of that one, but my feature request is not to "put off a flag until later". It's recognition that some flags require two responses, separated in time. First, a comment to the users involved. Second, a moderator action (if the users don't themselves have enough power to resolve it completely).
Note this SE Dev answer mapping out a proposed workflow for delaying flags
Skeptics - Auto-add to review queue after a delay
Add a review queue for posts with a “citation needed” notice
A different question, but with reasons that align with this question... it is a subset of the problem with a different proposed solution.
Bad Answer Handling
Improving the System to Deal with Bad Answers
This related question is an elaborate 'workflow' for tracking, and managing flags that require time to follow up on. This is also a subset of the problem expressed here - a delayed flag notification on a post.
Note, this answer that has established a possible 'usefulness test' on The Workplace
Chat discussions about this problem
- The WaterCooler - Discussion - 1 Oct 2014
- The Tavern - Discussion - 17 November 2011
