How to answer a question in a declined flag?

Question

I voted for this question to be reopened because the duplicate does not help in answering the question.

I also flagged for moderator attention with the following comment:

This is closed as a duplicate and it probably is a duplicate to some question somewhere but not to the question chosen as duplicate here.

The person declining the flag was kind enough to add a comment or rather a question as a decline reason.

declined - care to suggest a better duplicate instead then?

How would I go about responding to the moderator's custom flag message if care to find a duplicate or not?

---

_{Update: The linked question is now deleted and I can only assume that the reason is that I brought attention to it here. It was not a particularly good question but I don't believe deletion was the correct action to take.}

_{When should I delete questions?}

_{Closed questions that are of no lasting value whatsoever should be flagged and deleted.}

_{Before voting to delete, please check that there are no good answers; if so, then the question should be flagged for moderator attention as a potential merge candidate. We don't like to lose great answers!}

_{Also, be cautious when deleting questions closed as duplicates; they can serve as a signpost, directing users to useful answers on another question.}

Answer 1

As the mod who declined it hopefully I can explain my reasoning a bit better here:

When I saw the flag in the my interpretation of the flag was that you wanted me to reopen and then reclose the question as a duplicate. The problem however was that the discussion as to what the new duplicate should be was conspicuously absent, which essentially left me wondering quite what you expected me to actually do.

I didn't want to leave something that clearly was a duplicate of something open. (At least 6 people were giving clear signs they thought it should be closed as a duplicate). I know virtually nothing of that subject area and even if it was a topic I was familiar with I'm not enthusiastic about picking a dupe and unilaterally closing.

In terms of my message I'm sorry it wasn't more clear. The kind of thing that would be more helpful is a pointer to a new duplicate, either in the flag, or a "see comments" note in the flag if there's already a suitable candidate there instead.

Answer 2

When you vote to reopen a post, it goes into the reopen queue so the rest of the community can make the decision. It is also usually best to leave a comment explaining why you don't think it is a duplicate to help inform the rest of the community why you think it should be reopened. What likely happen is the vote went into the reopen queue and enough users did not think the post should have been reopened, so they clicked "Leave Closed", and eventually caused your reopen vote to expire.

If you flagged after this, it is understandable, but a moderator who responded to the flag might not have known this and responded with a somewhat rhetorical reponse and probably trying to point out in a less than obvious way that you shouldn't have flagged.

You can't respond directly to the moderator, but if you want to "respond", the only way to do it is to do exactly what the mod said and find a better duplicate and flag the post again. You can't expect the moderators to go looking for a duplicate, they have enough to do, so if you want to take the time to flag to say "there is probably a better duplicate", you should take the time to find the better duplicate.

The only time a user with >3K rep needs to flag to close or reopen is when the action is something you can't do on your own:

• Vote to close as a duplicate as a post without an upvoted answer (very rare that this would need done, but I've done it before)
• Change the close reason or the duplicate target on a post.
• Questions asked in low view tags sometimes need some extra help to get closed as Joshua suggests since you don't get enough active users who can close questions as quickly as some questions need to be closed.

When you want to change the duplicate, then you can flag and give the mod a better duplicate, and briefly explain why.