In general I don't really know where the flag queue goes or if it's apart from the closed question queue. So I'm not sure if there is further value in flagging a question already voted to close.

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4 Answers

up vote 10 down vote accepted

Generally, there is no need to flag a question immediately after voting to close it. In the vast majority of cases, there will be other community members who happen to be looking at a question and voting on it as they deem appropriate, without ever requiring intervention from a moderator.

However, in certain cases it may be worth flagging a question which you've voted to close if you don't believe it'll ever receive enough votes from the community to be closed, such as:

  • If it's very old (at least a few months to over a year)
  • If it's in a low-traffic tag
  • If it hasn't been active or viewed in a while

That's where a flag will come in handy, as a single moderator will be able to handle the closure with a single vote.

There are also special cases, such as if a question is good but off-topic on one Q&A site but would belong on another, and any other case that would warrant a detailed description (such as abusive behavior, lengthy comments, or other issues). Those are OK to flag, but make sure you're specific in your flag description to help us understand what's happening.

Conversely, please avoid flagging questions that you've voted to close if they are likely to be closed by the community (e.g. relatively new questions, questions in high-traffic tags, etc) and don't need moderator action. Otherwise, by the time a moderator gets to them, they'll probably already have been closed, and often not require further action. If there are too many of these flags, they become noise and can potentially get in the way of other flags.

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I've found the close vote queue to be quite helpful at getting questions closed when I flag a low-traffic question. –  Servy Oct 16 '12 at 16:05
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There is no need to do so in the general case. Let community moderation take its course. Once the question gets 5 close votes, it will be closed.

The only exception for me personally is when I stumble upon something which most definitely needs to be closed, but where attention for the particular question seems to be non-existent. In such a case I do occasionally flag for moderator attention, explaining that I think it should be closed, casting my close vote at the same time so it does not appear to be a unilateral decision from a moderator.

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Normally no as the question will appear in the close voters queue and other users can vote to close it as well.

However there are a few cases where I think you should

  • If the question is off-topic and would be on topic for a site which is not one of the 5 listed, only a moderator can migrate these.

  • If it is old an unlikely to be looked at, this was often needed in the large tag cleanup - however with the new review queues this is needed less as it is likely to be reviewed.

  • If it is a duplicate but the newer version has useful answers then a moderator should be called for to merge the answers
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You don't need to flag a question for close. When a user with more than 3K reputation flag any question for close, it automatically converts in to vote-to close.

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