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This is a follow on to What's the difference between down-vote, vote to close and flag ? and a recent issue about moderator action: Answer that *is* an answer deleted by mod because "it does not provide an answer"?. I think flags should almost always be accompanied by down votes, comments, and when appropriate a vote to close.

The issue moderators face when dealing with flags is that the flags are not publicly visible. This means that if content is flagged multiple times moderators can see that the community wants action to be taken, but when they do that action it looks like a unilateral decision.

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    I do not think that duplicates which do not happen because of laziness but bad searchability should be downvoted.
    – Wrzlprmft Mod
    Commented Oct 13, 2014 at 8:38
  • @Wrzlprmft I agree that down voting a duplicate is not needed, but a vote to close and a comment are still important. Further, I don't think duplicates should generally be flagged for moderator attention since the community tends to take care of them pretty quickly.
    – StrongBad
    Commented Oct 13, 2014 at 8:52
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    Well, flagging is what users with less than 3k reputation can do about duplicate questions (which then sends them to the usual review queue for closing questions, if I am not mistaken).
    – Wrzlprmft Mod
    Commented Oct 13, 2014 at 9:01

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I would reformulate your sentence: I think flags should almost always be accompanied by down votes, comments, OR when appropriate a vote to close. There are some answers that I believe should be transformed into a comment (like the one in the post you linked), but do not necessarily deserve down-voting (which, in my opinion, is used for bad content).

Also, I wouldn't be against having the number of flags shown, to motivate moderator action.

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  • I think of answers that are really just comments as bad content.
    – StrongBad
    Commented Sep 9, 2014 at 8:01
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    If they are good contents, but bad answers, it's just misplaced content, not necessarily bad.
    – user102
    Commented Sep 9, 2014 at 8:21
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    @StrongBad: I have experienced at times that a new user (who does not have the reputation to comment) posts a really helpful comment as an answer (and sometimes even remarks that it should be a comment). There is no reason to downvote this.
    – Wrzlprmft Mod
    Commented Oct 13, 2014 at 8:36

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