A couple of my flags have been declined recently

Those SE sites aren't in the standard list of "should be on...", hence I found what I thought were the most appropriate sites and flagged as "other".

A bunch of questions arise from the flags being declined, such as "was I wrong to flag them?", "did I suggest the wrong sites", or "should I have used a different reason?"

The comments on Flag declined - answer in comments, simple fix, parties seem to have moved on suggest that that one should simply have been flagged as "off topic", so is that the case with mine as well?

The supplementary question is, of course, whether the "should be on..." option should allow for any other SE site rather than just one of a handful, but that's very much secondary to my wanting to know how to flag such things correctly in the immediate future if I happen across similar.

Migration (or "should be on") should be reserved for high quality questions that just happen to be asked on the wrong site. A poor question just means another community needs to clean it up. If it is off-topic on Stack Overflow, just vote to close with the apporpriate off-topic reason. –  psubsee2003 May 13 at 0:26
Thanks - that answers my question. –  ClickRick May 13 at 6:32
I have a similar question, but I don't think the questions I flagged were low-quality: stackoverflow.com/users/flag-summary/190277 ; I don't necessarily want to argue, but I would like to know how I can get more feedback/guidance –  Ben Bolker May 21 at 0:11
apparently the link is not accessible to everyone: screenshot at math.mcmaster.ca/bolker/misc/flags.png –  Ben Bolker May 21 at 0:42
OK, I think perhaps I understand -- I think related to meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/253545/… . Of the two posts, one turned out to have been cross-posted already, the other was posted to the new site by the OP. So I think that the message is just telling me that the flags were declined, and (incorrectly?) leading me to believe that the moderators disagreed with my decision ... ? Is it worth posting this as a separate question? –  Ben Bolker May 21 at 0:50

2 Answers 2

up vote 20 down vote accepted

Keep in mind that a moderator flag gives you extraordinary powers. A single action by a single user is enough to get content removed. It normally takes 8 high-rep SO users to achieve it, 5 to vote to close it, another 3 to get it deleted.

So you'd better be 8 times more sure about it, a pretty high bar.

Especially difficult with request to move questions. That's been tried and other sites did not like to be treated like SO's garbage can. Understandably. Both questions you quote belong in such a can.

Keeping the site tidy has been made very, very difficult since the close-reason reform of last year. It shows, my personalized front page looks a lot like a garbage can these days. Nothing much anybody can do about it, downvote questions that you think don't belong on the site so you'll at least help avoid other SO users from having to look at it. They do get auto-deleted after a while. The two questions have been deleted, your call to arms did have an effect. Maybe that's another way to go about it...

If that's the case, it seems like a clearer reason for rejecting the flag is called for, something like, "The post is too low quality to be moved to another site," if I understand your reasoning correctly. –  jpmc26 May 14 at 4:48

When you cast a flag as "belongs on Math.SE," you're essentially asking for a migration. Your flag got declined because there's no way we're going to migrate a copy/paste of a homework assignment anywhere.

The second question is an under-specified product recommendation. It's not on-topic anywhere. Read the Help Center for Software Recommendations; they have very specific requirements for questions that are asked there.


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