Reasons to decline flag

Question

In related to, but not only because of declination of my flag ([Note2]) I wonder if moderators shouldn't be pushed to select/write in the reason why they declined the flag. This would give users feedback and it would reduce repeated mistakes in flaging.
Once more, to avoid cofusion:

1. Are the moderators pushed to give reasons of flag declination?
2. Can users see the flag declination reason?[note1]

Note1: For both declined flags I see *a moderator reviewed your flag, but found no evidence to support it * which is useless.
Note2: Check if any values in array are equal to each other duplicate of older Check if all values in array are the same and having even the same response

Answer 1

1. Are the moderators pushed to give reasons of flag declination?
2. Can users see the flag declination reason?[note1]

Yes. Moderators must choose a decline reason when declining a flag; here are the options:

• flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer
• a moderator reviewed your flag, but found no evidence to support it
• flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention

In addition, a moderator may choose to enter a custom decline reason, but in most cases, the above three decline reasons are sufficient, especially given the number of flags SO gets.

And yes, you do see the decline reason in your flags page.

Answer 2

To be perfectly honest, we'll probably be rolling these flags into review and out of the mod queue fairly shortly, and you'll be less likely to get personalized responses to duplicate flags. There are a tremendous number of these every day, and they're both time-consuming and error-prone. The best folks to evaluate duplicates are the folks asking and answering questions in the relevant tags, not moderators.

If you want feedback, post a comment with the link before you flag. This is more helpful to the asker anyway, and if you're wrong it provides a way for anyone who cares to respond and explain why. When you get close privileges, the system will post these comments for you anyway*, so no harm in getting used to it early.

^{*we should probably do the same for dup-flags.}