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I flagged this Lifehacks question a few days ago for being off-topic. This morning, I received enough upvotes to obtain the Close Vote privileges. My flag was still pending:

my flag history with pending flag

I went to the question again and could vote to close it, and as a consequence I've marked my own flag as helpful:

my flag history, now with the flag marked helpful

I know the potential for abuse is minimal (you can probably do something if you are just above the threshold, e.g. 3000/3001 or 500/501 on betas, unaccept an answer, flag a dozen questions, accept the answer, rinse and repeat, and there are certainly easier ways to boost your flag score, even if you're not a moderator) but I'm wondering if this is a or ?

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I suspect it's “we didn't design the system with this corner case in mind”. But it's inconsistent with suggested edits where you can't review your own. I guess it's because when you review a suggested edit, you're reviewing one specific user's action, whereas with close flag, you aren't directly handling a close flag, you're handling an item on a queue where it could be for other reasons (other users' close flags, or close votes) so there's no direct link to the flagger. But even there, it is inconsistent with the handling of the low-quality review queue, where you don't see items triggered by your own flags.

With suggested edits, if you could validate your own, you could not only edit a post (which you can do anyway if you have the reputation to review suggested edits) but give yourself reputation. With close votes, all you can do is boost your number of helpful flags, which 1. is pretty much irrelevant and 2. as you say can be done in easier ways that don't constrain you to fluctuate around a certain fixed reputation.

So I say it's a bug, but a very low-priority one.

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