Why flagging duplicate answers is waste of time?

Question

Today I was flag this first answer as a duplicate answer with 2 and 3.

1. drawInRect error: CGContextSetFont: invalid context 0x0
2. drawRect and dispatch context error 0x0
3. iOS : Core Text - loosing context when drawing image inside a block

This flag was declined and moderator noted:

Do you know that you're wasting your time?

Did I something wrong here? Flagging duplicate answers is wrong?

EDIT: I think I owe you an apology. As Bill the Lizard said, moderators warned me before but since I didn't read their message, looks like I continue to wrong flag this kind of answers. I'm deeply sorry for that!

The moderator message could be nicer? Yeah.. But hey :) Things can happen...

Answer 1

The real question here is which moderator felt the need to be a dick to somebody trying to help the site by daring to use flags. – meagar 18 mins ago

@meagar This is exactly what I think also.. – Soner Gönül 16 mins ago

I don't mean to condone the snarky tone of the decline message, but you have been told before, more politely, that you don't need to flag these posts.

These are fairly low priority flags, and they don't need to be bumped up the queue by having people piggy-back off the automatic Community flag to raise their flag weight. Go ahead and flag the question if it's also a duplicate. That's a much better use of our time and yours.

Answer 2

Flagging duplicate answers is a waste, for the following reason:

• If the OP copies his own answer, then the system warns us automatically, every time they do it (which leads to an interesting flag queue if they do it a couple times)

However,

• If the OP copies someone elses answer, then that's something that the system doesn't alert us to.

If you see someone plagarizing, please let us know through a flag. If someone is just copying and pasting their answers, let it go (though that may be an indication that the questions are duplicates, which are worthy of close votes or flags as appropriate).

Sometimes moderator messages are ... less than helpful. We see a lot of flags in a day, and there are times that we don't take the time to either

1. decline with a link to a meta post
2. decline with a long winded explanation

Usually, however, we do. When we don't, it's probably because one of the following reasons:

1. We've seen way too many mod flags that day
2. The user is consistently flagging for the same thing in an effort to up their flag weight (usually by doing an SEDE search for 'best' and then flagging 4 year old questions as not constructive, and 4 year old link only answers as 'not an answer')
3. The user is (for whatever reason) fixated on another user. We see this more than we probably should.
4. We get in a mood. This happens. We're human. Should it? Probably not -- but clearing hundreds of flags every day will lead a person to snark every once in a while.

I'm sorry you had a less than helpful mod message.

Answer 3

Sorry to be blunt, but I've tried to contact you about this (without using the babies-are-being-eaten-by-dingos! mod message facilities) without success.

As others have stated, we already get notified that a user has reposted the same answer on multiple questions. Therefore, whatever you are doing to search these out and flag them is a complete waste of your time.

This isn't "wrong", per se. We would appreciate it if it wasn't already automatically handled by the system. This is just a waste of your time, something you should have more of.

Answer 4

Duplicate answers by the same author are perhaps indicative of duplicate questions, but by themselves they are fine. Close the question instead.

Since those 3 answers are exact dupes, you are indeed wasting your time; exactly duplicate answers are automatically flagged already by the system, so moderators can investigate and find dupe questions. Granted, the flag feedback could have been a little less terse on that, but perhaps the mods already tried to tell you your efforts were in vain?

If you do find duplicate answers that are by different authors, then that could indicate plagiarism and gaming by one of the authors. Do flag those.

Answer 5

Our moderation team works very hard, each active moderator on the site spends an average of at least an hour a day, if not more, looking at the worst content that we have to offer. At an average of almost 2,000 flags per day, we ask a lot of these folks - and they consistently give us more than we ask for when it comes to their time and patience.

You were, as others pointed out, notified that the type of flag you were raising was not necessary - the system automatically raises those flags. It's likely that you didn't notice the first flag rejected, and continued to keep flagging.

Moderators declining a flag have a very limited number of characters to enter if they wish to give a custom response, and he was trying to point out to you that you were wasting your time by raising the flags. While it came off somewhat snarky, he was trying to be helpful. He's also human. Comments, chat and possibly a system sent moderator message might have been a better way to reach you, but hindsight is always crystal clear.

To answer your question again, directly - while we appreciate your time, the system automatically flags duplicate content by the same author, so no, you don't need to flag it.

If you see duplicate content by different authors flag it, we're probably dealing with plagiarism which is a very serious issue, one the moderator you interacted with is very good at investigating and ultimately handling :) The system really can't, therefore doesn't automatically raise flags for this.

Answer 6

Duplicate answers are not in themselves a bad thing. The same answer may apply to different questions. If the questions are duplicates, however, feel free to flag them or vote to close.

It is even allowed to copy someone else's answer as long as you attribute it to the original author (see the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license).