Meta Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for meta-discussion of the Stack Exchange family of Q&A websites. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Yesterday I had flagged mysql-select-query, question as "Not a Real Question", and my flag was declined. But when I checked the question today, it had been closed as "Not a Real Question". I don't exactly understand the reason behind this. Why is the question closed for exactly the same reason I flagged it, but my flag was declined?
No offense is meant. Just want to know how this ambiguity may have been caused, that's all.
It could have been a simple mistake. Perhaps someone meant to click 'valid' but ended up clicking 'invalid'. Though we're extremely careful, it is easy to make a mistake when doing a repetitive task. We don't have the ability to go back with flags, once dismissed they vanish from our tools. Any other action we take can be undone with just a few clicks.
Typically, a moderator will mark a flag as valid if they are able to see how or why you might have formed your opinion of the post in question, even if they don't take the action that you suggest. We much prefer the community to take action when it comes to borderline questions.
Additionally, we tend to take no action, even dismissing, if we're not familiar enough with the topic at hand to judge the technical merits of a post. While most flags we service require us to examine the quality of a post, NARQ requires us to know enough about the topic in order to decide if the question is answerable in many cases. Sometimes questions are just downright incoherent, but we come back to quality there - not evaluating if enough information has been provided in order for someone to answer.
With that being said, I'm pretty confident that this particular case was just a mistake that happened as a result of a human being doing repetitive work. I'm pretty sure I'm not the one that dealt with your flag, but I have made the exact mistake that I'm describing several times in the past.
The question was closed by 5 users who cast their vote to close. Your flag might have been deemed invalid by a whole different set of users or Moderators.
I'd assume the post might have been voted to close after your flag was marked invalid.
/tools to me... When a moderator handles the flag there, shouldn't it dismiss it from the queue just like it would if you handled it from the mod control panel? Sounds like that's the behavior you expected, and it's definitely what I'd expect too. You might consider opening a question about it.
Jul 6, 2011 at 11:35
Simple matter of different opinions: the moderator handling your flag either thought the question is real and valid, or preferred to let the community decide and not close the question himself.
Personally can't see why it's not real question but guess the five people closing it knew what they're doing.
Bottom line, I would flag question as "Not a real question" only if I'm 100% sure this is the case - border cases like this better be left for the 3K+ members to decide.
This happened to a question I flagged yesterday.
Facebook & Jquery - Share to show
I flagged the question and it was declined. Since the flag, the question continued to amass more and more down-votes until finally it was flagged again and closed.
I think users who initially flagged the question should be given their flag weight back in the case that a greater consensus is reached later that a flag is actually valid.
make sense?
I had a similar situation occur recently.
I flagged what was obviously a completely off-topic question as such, and had the flag declined as not being supported.
Within minutes of my flagging it, it had accumulated -7 votes and was closed and then deleted.
This isn't about the reputation - heck, I didn't even know I had flag reputation - but about feedback loops.
SO has a great set of feedback loops, which is what helps make it a great resource. But there doesn't seem a way to give feedback to or request review for the purpose of feedback to Moderators.
Is there a need for a feedback loop here? If so, how should it be constructed?
And another one. I don't care too much, if a flag is accepted or declined, but it is still a bit annoying, if one flags something 'opinion based', gets declined and shortly later the same question is on hold because...five members deemed it opinion based.
