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I have always felt that the criteria for the use of the Very Low Quality flag are fuzzy, confusing, and ultimately wrong, and I recently had a VLQ flag declined that I would like some clarifications on.

The answer in question is this one, which I'll quote as an image in case it is deleted.

I think the question, Why opposite poles of magnet attract each other, why don't they repel?, is relatively poor to begin with, but depending on your perspective, this answer is either (i) a load of waffle with very little to do with the question, (ii) a push for a non-mainstream personal theory, (iii) just plain wrong, or (iv) a load of waffle that doesn't even manage to mean much.

Either way, I find that this answer is in active detriment to the site, and it needs to be downvoted and deleted relatively quickly. As such, a VLQ flag is precisely the thing to put this answer in front of review-minded individuals with independent perspectives and a handy Recommend Deletion button that can remove bad content when acted upon.

I therefore did just that, and I flagged it as VLQ. The reviewers apparently agreed with me, giving it three Recommend Deletion votes to one Looks OK.

However, despite the reviewers agreeing with the flag, it still got declined with the usual

declined - flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer.

I really, really, really don't get this. The flag text reads

it is very low quality

This answer has severe formatting or content problems. This answer is unlikely to be salvageable through editing, and might need to be removed.

and the answer ticks all the boxes. It is definitely very low quality, it has severe content problems, it cannot be salvaged without a complete re-do, and as it stands it needs to be removed. A VLQ flag is the organic mechanism we have to deal with content that's so bad that it needs to be removed.

Moreover, it seems that I am currently banned from raising that specific kind of flag, partly from this incident and a VLQ flag on this answer, which received a single review that also agreed with the flag.

So, I have a number of questions.

  • Procedurally, how did these two flags come to be declined even though reviewers agreed with them? Since both reviews are incomplete (not enough Recommend Deletion votes to delete, but not enough Looks OK votes to kick it out of the queue) I imagine it was manually handled by a disagreeing mod.

  • However, if moderators are going through VLQ flags, what's the point of the review queue? Or are there clear signs that the VLQ queue is not coping with its job and moderators need to step in and do the community's job for it?

  • How are those two answers at all content we want to remain on the site? How do those answers and users contribute anything but a bad image in the eyes of a prospective expert who's looking for a cool place with interesting questions to answer? What reason is there that changes the response away from "delete them as fast as a consensual community process will be able to process them"?

  • Taking as a premise that they do need to be deleted, what review mechanism other than the VLQ queue does this community have available to keep the site clean from detrimental posts like these?

  • Is the site still at a stage that community moderation (particularly at the 2k+ level) cannot cope with things like this and explicit moderator intervention is needed at every stage, even after the mods explicitly stepped back from going through the Close review queue because the reviewer traffic was high enough?

  • Conversely, is the site mature enough, and with a strong enough 20k+ population, that direct votes to delete are sufficient to handle posts like this?

  • What is it that compels us to make available to the world posts like these, even after they've been judged by the community to be somewhere between plain wrong and intentionally misleading? When posting users license their content to SE, give it permission to host it, and ask it politely to do so. There is nothing that compels us or SE to keep wrong content on our walls.

  • If flags are not meant to handle "technical inaccuracies", what on Earth does "severe content problems" even mean?

I appreciate that there is a lot of inertia here, and that there is some amount of general guidance that emanates from the Stack Exchange team and broader community, and that some of our moderators take this guidance very explicitly to heart. However, I do not think that the answer to any of the above questions should be "because SE says so". That's just intentionally crippling the community moderation mechanisms without any amount of critical analysis.

Instead, we need to recognize that the flagging and reviewing mechanisms are tools provided by Stack Exchange to multiple communities, that they need to be uniform to keep the development process manageable, and that they therefore need to take a very general form that is able to serve over 130 different sites with different requirements. However, these are still only tools, and it is up to us to find the ways and community processes to use these tools that work for us as a site, and that respond to the unique pressures that this site is under.

In particular, this includes crackpot answers (particularly the lower tier, the ones for which "non-mainstream" is a stretched compliment) that only serve to make this site look unattractive to prospective experts. We have a software tool (VLQ flags then queue) that enables us to efficiently clean these up as a community without unilateral action. What is there, beyond blind SE dogma, that forces us to shoot ourselves in the foot and disable this tool from use?

Sorry for the long rant, but I really don't see it. Rant aside, I really am interested in the answers to the questions above.


Edit, just to have a clear tl;dr proposal:

  • Answers which are (i) flat-out incorrect, (ii) so completely incorrect that no amount of editing can make them useful or constructive, and (iii) so completely incorrect that they are actively harmful to the site and its standing, should be flagged as VLQ, which then feeds directly to the Low Quality Posts queue. There, if people agree with that three-point assessment, they should vote Recommend Deletion (or, if 20k+, Delete). Flags should sit there for X hours (where X is much bigger than 1/4), and should only be handed over to the moderator review queue after that time, or if there is obvious conflict in the review outcomes.
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  • $\begingroup$ All flags are visible to the moderators, but please don't take that to indicate that there is no purpose in your going through the queues: we can't be here all the time and some decisions are better made by consensus than by fiat. I know I looked at both of those posts, I believe that I didn't act on them because I prefer to see those decisions taken by the community. $\endgroup$ Jul 17, 2016 at 1:10
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    $\begingroup$ @dmckee It seems to me that what happened here was the opposite - that the questions were taken out of the queue essentially by moderator fiat, and that the moderator decision was in the opposite direction to the one the community process was leaning to. I don't have an issue with mods being able to see the queues, in the same way that you can see the close-votes queue, but I don't think mods should intervene unless the queue is obviously and explicitly failing, so I'd like to understand why a mod thought that this was the case here. $\endgroup$ Jul 17, 2016 at 1:15
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    $\begingroup$ I thought it was very clear that flags/deletion are never meant to handle technical inaccuracies. That's the purpose of downvotes. This is a moderated site, but we don't go around deleting everything that's wrong. If you disagree with this, what position do you have? That we should vote to delete everything we downvote? That moderators should delete anything with more downvotes than upvotes? $\endgroup$
    – user10851
    Jul 17, 2016 at 2:16
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    $\begingroup$ IMHO, answers with utterly meaning less and misleading information must be removed. I am not saying wrong answers must be removed but answers which are WAY WAY WAY off track from general physics (personal theories?) must be removed to keep the forum clean. $\endgroup$
    – Yashas
    Jul 17, 2016 at 8:52
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    $\begingroup$ @ChrisWhite The proposal is pretty clear: posts should be deleted if six 2k+ users (or three 20k+ users, or some linear combination thereof) think that the answer has unfixable content problems and cannot be edited into a form that isn't actively harmful to the site. And regarding the "meant to" on flag use - says who? SE dogma built for the pressures of Stack Overflow and The Workplace? How does that SE dogma apply to this specific site in particular? $\endgroup$ Jul 17, 2016 at 12:59
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    $\begingroup$ I think the logic is that flags are meant to indicate content that needs moderator action. The review queues were introduced simply as a way to reduce the moderators' workload, but they were never meant to enable to community to take actions that a moderator wouldn't. So the existing guidance on flag usage is basically meant to teach people how to moderate, and that includes things like not deleting answers for being wrong. The thing is, that advice is relevant when a single person is doing the deletion, but not so much when it's a consensus of multiple users. $\endgroup$
    – David Z
    Jul 17, 2016 at 14:30
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    $\begingroup$ I suppose that ideally, what we would want is a review queue, populated by flags, which does not "spill over" into the mod flag queue. Whatever type of flag populates this queue would be used for content that should be deleted by consensus, not by a single person. $\endgroup$
    – David Z
    Jul 17, 2016 at 14:32
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    $\begingroup$ @DavidZ The point is that "the logic" of how the tool was conceived is not particularly relevant: what matters is the problems we have and the tools we have available to solve them. We already have a flag-populated queue which handles the lower tier of unfixable content, all it needs is breathing space from the mods to let it do its job. And re 'not deleting answers for being wrong', cf. 'what compels us to host this harmful content?' and 'even the worst answer is here for your convenience'. $\endgroup$ Jul 17, 2016 at 14:35
  • $\begingroup$ Considering the answers that prompted this question: if we're not deleting them for being wrong, why then should they be deleted? (If I understand correctly, we agree that VLQ flags should be cast on posts that the flagger believes should be deleted. Right?) $\endgroup$
    – David Z
    Jul 17, 2016 at 14:40
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    $\begingroup$ Who says we're not deleting them for being wrong? We should delete them because (i) they're flat-out incorrect, (ii) they are so completely incorrect that no amount of editing can make them useful or constructive, and (iii) they are so completely incorrect that they are actively harmful to the site and its standing. (And yes, we agree that VLQ flags denote belief by the flagger that the content should be deleted.) Again: for something that ticks these three boxes, what compels us to host that content? $\endgroup$ Jul 17, 2016 at 14:44
  • $\begingroup$ Hm, maybe I misunderstood you. Anyway, let me see if I'm clear on where we're going with this. If I understand correctly, you're saying that you want to be able to flag posts as VLQ for being what I'll call "egregiously wrong", you accept that moderators shouldn't have to unilaterally decide between plain old wrong and "egregiously wrong", and your proposed solution is that moderators simply don't handle those flags, perhaps until they are X hours old where X is much larger than 1/4. Right? $\endgroup$
    – David Z
    Jul 17, 2016 at 14:52
  • $\begingroup$ Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying. $\endgroup$ Jul 17, 2016 at 14:57
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    $\begingroup$ Let us continue this discussion in chat. $\endgroup$
    – David Z
    Jul 17, 2016 at 14:57

3 Answers 3

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I agree, the very low quality flag is currently somewhere between useless and horribly confusing. Not only I agree, several posts on meta.SE also agree:

  • Remove VLQ as a flag option, top answer says should be removed for questions, and renamed just "delete" on answers - which I think would be even more useless, considering we do not delete answers that are not either "not an answer" or flaggable as offensive/spam. Shog9's answer has an interesting bit on the purpose of the low quality flag:

    See, back in 2011, folks were posting a lot of really terrible stuff. Not exactly nonsense mind you; just... Embarrassingly-bad questions and answers. Stuff that wasn't even wrong so much as just... Annoying. Txt-speak explanations that don't explain anything. Code-only answers where the code isn't formatted and also is copied directly from the question. Questions that are copied from an assignment somewhere, with a few round-trips through a machine translation service en route. Stuff that, given infinite time and patience and clairvoyance could maybe be fixed, but in practice just saps the energy of everyone reading and makes us long for the quality and clarity we used to have over on Yahoo! Answers.

  • Rename “Very low quality” in “unintelligible”, only answer says "rename to delete".

  • Is the “very low quality” flag necessary?, top voted answer says

    A bad/incorrect answer or an answer that's difficult to understand can still answer the question, albeit badly. I don't think "not an answer" the same as "very low quality" at all.

So, in summary, most people seem to agree that either "very low quality" should mean posts like the ones you are flagging - posts that technically try to answer the question, but horribly fail at providing anything useful to the reader - or should be abolished. I'll now address a point DavidZ makes in his answer:

Very low quality is not needed for gibberish posts. Shog9 explicitly recommends flagging gibberish as "rude or abusive", and "not an answer" would apply equally well to gibberish. If "Can I read this: Yes/No" is the criterion for acception/declining low quality flags, there is truly no point to this flag.

And reading Shog9's description of what the low quality flag was created for, it's explicitly for posts that are not gibberish, but nevertheless so worthless they do not deserve to be hosted on this site. Now, you may say that "downvotes" are there to fix that. But downvotes do not fix that, in particular when the post is written in correct English but contains no information of value - it still gets upvoted by someone, and it takes five downvotes against one upvote to even make that a zero sum game. It is perfectly possible (and it happens!) to get net positive reputation just by posting garbage.

Now, there's still a case to be made that we shouldn't, on the grounds of some imagined fairness, vote to delete answers that try to answer the question just because of our judgement of their content. But when I read crackpots pushing their personal theories, answers that have no grounding in physics whatsoever, I cannot help but thinking that the mission statement of StackExchange is "The best answers rise to the top", not "Even the worst answer is here for your convenience".

Maybe it is not a moderator's place to pass such judgement on the content of answer (although I would not have a problem with that). But it should be the community's place to pass judgement on bad answers, and yes, even decide that they do not deserve a space in this community and should be deleted. So my idea would be that low quality flags should not be declined by moderators if they are not obviously cast in bad faith for some reason, but if the moderator in question doesn't feel they have the right to unanimously validate the flag, they should just refrain from acting on it. Let the review queue do its job. Because, in many cases, I have found that the community rather unanimously decides to get rid of obvious crackpottery and stuff that is so wrong as to be unsalvagable.

If this is not at all the intended way the VLQ flag and its review queue should be used, then the flag option needs to be removed, since currently it is effectively used that way unless a moderator manually declines the flag.

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  • $\begingroup$ I object to your objection: the post you linked says that any flag works for gibberish. You can justify flagging it as VLQ, or NAA, or abuse, or whatever. (So says Shog9.) In any case, I think there was some updated advice that makes that post obsolete, but then again we do have our own guidelines about flag usage, and do you want to argue that what Shog says should override that? Anyway, if you're suggesting that VLQ flags should be given more time before mods act on them, I'm all for that. It would be a good matter for a separate meta post. $\endgroup$
    – David Z
    Jul 17, 2016 at 14:25
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    $\begingroup$ @DavidZ: My point is that if NAA and rude/offensive flags may be used for gibberish, and you're saying that VLQ should only be used for gibberish, then the set of cases where only the VLQ flag is appropriate is empty, which makes the flag completely useless. The vote count on "our own guidelines" is altogether low, it has 123 views and essentially only you posted there, I'm not convinced that post counts as "our guidelines", especially since I see the LQ review queue in practice rather more in line with Emilio's expectations. $\endgroup$
    – ACuriousMind Mod
    Jul 17, 2016 at 14:31
  • $\begingroup$ Well, according to the guidelines I linked, NAA and offensive flags shouldn't be used for gibberish. This is in contrast to what Shog9 said in that post you linked. So on our site, there is a nonempty set of posts where VLQ is the only appropriate flag. And I am aware that post never made it to faq "stage", but it was a product of prior discussions that had taken place elsewhere and until just now there were no counterarguments. That post reflects how the moderators handle flags. If we want to change that, we can do so, but it requires a discussion that has not happened. $\endgroup$
    – David Z
    Jul 17, 2016 at 14:39
  • $\begingroup$ I wholeheartedly agree with ACM here $\endgroup$ Jul 25, 2016 at 20:43
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Maybe this is splitting hairs, but while I do not agree there should be a "this answer is wrong" flag (or use of the VLQ flag for this purpose) I do agree with part of Emilio's sentiment—there should be a flag called "non-mainstream physics answer" similar to the one we have for questions.

Incorrectness = handle with downvotes.
Crackpottery = handle with flags (and downvotes).

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    $\begingroup$ Could you flesh out your answer a bit more? Specifically, are you requesting new functionality or is this within the existing flags? What should and should not be flagged, and how? Should those flags go to a review queue (if a new flag, which one?) or direct to moderators? What should reviewers do in that queue? What should moderators do with those flags? $\endgroup$ Jul 20, 2016 at 15:35
  • $\begingroup$ Rename VLQ flag to "non-mainstream physics answer." Continue to use in same fashion as, I gather, it has been. $\endgroup$
    – pentane
    Jul 20, 2016 at 15:39
  • $\begingroup$ So you're explicitly saying that the new NMPA flag should essentially go straight to moderators? (The current arrangement is 15 minutes in the LQP queue and then it appears on the moderator queue, so effectively most of those are handled by mods.) What should moderators do with such flags? Should they delete non-mainstream answers? (That gives mods single-handed power to delete answers based on their assessment of the technical merit of the post.) Should they not? (That essentially cripples the flag.) $\endgroup$ Jul 20, 2016 at 15:43
  • $\begingroup$ I have no stance on that. From what I saw in the chat you and Dave Z are working that issue and I have faith. My point here is: we have flag to remove crackpottery questions. Everyone understands this is good. If the VLQ flag is being used to flag crackpottery answers, call it the crackpottery answers flag and eliminate the VLQ flag and the confusion/vagaries that go with it. $\endgroup$
    – pentane
    Jul 20, 2016 at 15:54
  • $\begingroup$ Part of the point is that changing the flags implies either getting SE to make an exception to how the flags work for one site (hard) or getting SE to change how the flags work globally (even harder). That said, I'm pretty hazy on what you're proposing. Where's the line between downvotable incorrectness and flaggable crackpottery? What's the criterion people should use there? And on top of that, who should handle those flags, and what should they do with them? The whole process matters, because raised flags that just go in the bin (and generate flag suspensions) are no use at all. $\endgroup$ Jul 20, 2016 at 16:22
  • $\begingroup$ We have a flag for crackpottery questions. Why do you have so much hand-wringing about one for answers (aside from getting SE to make it)? $\endgroup$
    – pentane
    Jul 20, 2016 at 17:28
  • $\begingroup$ The problem with the current situation is that there is no way to flag answers as crackpottery without it ending up in the mod review queue, and we do not want mods to delete questions based on their technical merit - it needs to be a consensus vote. I don't understand your 'hand-wringing' question particularly well. $\endgroup$ Jul 20, 2016 at 17:42
  • $\begingroup$ @EmilioPisanty do you have a minute to discuss? chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/42797/vlq-flag $\endgroup$
    – pentane
    Jul 20, 2016 at 17:47
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Let me address the root of the problem first: the criteria for using a Very Low Quality flag, at least as far as the moderators are concerned (currently), are laid out in Which flag do I use for an inappropriate post?

The "very low quality" flag is for answers which are complete nonsense, such as

  • incoherent gibberish
  • anything not parseable as English text
  • answers posted in another language (although if you can edit in a translation, you're encouraged to do so instead of flagging)

When a VLQ flag appears in the moderator flag queue, my thought process is basically "Can I read this? Yes: decline/No: accept". The answer in question is certainly readable, and I think we would agree that it does not meet the criteria quoted above. Its main problem is that it's wrong. That calls for it to be downvoted, but not flagged. If it were to be deleted by three delete votes from non-moderators, that wouldn't be the worst thing, but a VLQ flag is meant to indicate that something is so obviously worthless that it deserves swift and ruthless deletion, even from a moderator.

So now let me address your individual points:

  • Procedurally, how did these two flags come to be declined even though reviewers agreed with them? Since both reviews are incomplete (not enough Recommend Deletion votes to delete, but not enough Looks OK votes to kick it out of the queue) I imagine it was manually handled by a disagreeing mod.

Yep, I checked and I'm the one who declined both those flags. (It shouldn't matter who exactly did it, but I'm just saying you're getting the closest thing to an authoritative answer here.) This was done from the moderator flag queue, not from the low-quality review queue.

  • However, if moderators are going through VLQ flags, what's the point of the review queue? Or are there clear signs that the VLQ queue is not coping with its job and moderators need to step in and do the community's job for it?

As described in this MSE question, if VLQ flags sit in their own queue for 15 minutes without being handled by the community, they are then added into the moderator flag queue. When the flags appear in the mod queue, we don't get any information about whether they are under review by the community or what the status of that review is; we only know that they have been sitting around for a certain amount of time and the community hasn't handled them.

One could take this as a sign that the VLQ queue is not doing its job, but it could also be the case that 15 minutes is too short to reflect the activity level for this site. This was discussed in the comments on that post, so I'd point you there for further reading.

  • How are those two answers at all content we want to remain on the site? How do those answers and users contribute anything but a bad image in the eyes of a prospective expert who's looking for a cool place with interesting questions to answer? What reason is there that changes the response away from "delete them as fast as a consensual community process will be able to process them"?

As I said, the biggest problem with these answers is that they are wrong. We already have a mechanism to distinguish right from wrong, namely voting. This takes into account that reasonable people often disagree on what is correct and what is not. If we additionally use flags to enforce consequences on wrong answers, that puts each individual moderator in the position of deciding right from wrong, and that's really not what we're here for.

  • Taking as a premise that they do need to be deleted, what review mechanism other than the VLQ queue does this community have available to keep the site clean from detrimental posts like these?

Well, as I've said I disagree with the premise. I think the system is designed the way it is for a reason: there is no other review mechanism for posts like these precisely because the site doesn't need to be kept clean from such posts.

  • Is the site still at a stage that community moderation (particularly at the 2k+ level) cannot cope with things like this and explicit moderator intervention is needed at every stage, even after the mods explicitly stepped back from going through the Close review queue because the reviewer traffic was high enough?

  • Conversely, is the site mature enough, and with a strong enough 20k+ population, that direct votes to delete are sufficient to handle posts like this?

Here I think you have a point. While I would always like to see more high-rep users active in moderation, I do think the community is capable of handling most of its own moderation, and it might be useful to tweak the thresholds of the review system so that flags aren't bumped up to the moderator queue so quickly. This would require a bit of data analysis on flag handling times, but if people are agreed on that conclusion, we could make a request to the SE team to change the thresholds.

  • What is it that compels us to make available to the world posts like these, even after they've been judged by the community to be somewhere between plain wrong and intentionally misleading? When posting users license their content to SE, give it permission to host it, and ask it politely to do so. There is nothing that compels us or SE to keep wrong content on our walls.

Of course, nothing compels us to host this kind of content. But again, the tricky part is deciding which content is worthy of hosting and which content is not, and in particular, who makes that decision. Like I said, individual moderators shouldn't be expected to distinguish right from wrong. A consensus of high-rep users is better equipped to do it, but still, the main mechanism to indicate wrongness is by voting, not deletion.

  • If flags are not meant to handle "technical inaccuracies", what on Earth does "severe content problems" even mean?

It means stuff like "jasfoijaw3fjpawejfp0awjefp0asj0pfoajks09ojk3meosoifmasd". (Yes, we do get posts like that.) Things that you can't even read. "Severe content problems" doesn't refer to the content being wrong, it refers to the content being unintelligible. The sort of thing that any competent English speaker, whether or not they have any knowledge of physics, would be unable to make sense of.

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    $\begingroup$ Sorry, David, but all I see here is "because SE says so" without any analysis of why what SE says is what works for this specific site, even where you agree there are problems and obvious ways to fix them. $\endgroup$ Jul 17, 2016 at 12:49
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    $\begingroup$ I also find it extremely disingenuous to link to the 15 minute passover from the VLQ to the mod queue, where the very next sentence shows exceptions are already implemented. I'm not saying a one-hour delay is enough (it still sounds too short), but saying "a mod would have handled it anyway" is pretty empty when mod actions would and must be in a different direction to community moderation (i.e. unilateral deletion is not OK, but six-way recommended deletion is a whole other ball game). $\endgroup$ Jul 17, 2016 at 12:50
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    $\begingroup$ Finally, I don't understand the dithering over over "who makes that decision". It goes on a review queue and six 2k+ users (or three 20k+ users, or some linear combination thereof) decide that the content problems are unfixable and the answer cannot be edited into a form that is not harmful for the site. This is a perfectly definite proposal and a sterling example of the community moderation that we're meant to be moving towards. No one is expecting mods from making this decision: we're asking mods to step back from this decision, so the community can handle it. $\endgroup$ Jul 17, 2016 at 12:55
  • $\begingroup$ I don't understand your response. Where am I saying "because SE says so"? I've linked to posts on MSE that explain what the current situation of the flag queue is, but I have not used those posts to justify why your flags were declined. The flags were declined because they were used improperly, according to guidance on flag usage which is written out right here on our own meta site, and has been vetted and approved by the community (if votes are any indication). $\endgroup$
    – David Z
    Jul 17, 2016 at 14:13
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    $\begingroup$ The overall flag guidance is a comprehensive post and its (relatively low) score represents overall endorsement, and there have been multiple complaints about the uselessness of the VLQ flag as interpreted there, so I don't think any claim of consensus that the current VLQ status quo is the right one can really stick. In any case, I am mostly interested in your response to the technical criticism. $\endgroup$ Jul 17, 2016 at 14:41
  • $\begingroup$ @EmilioPisanty OK, which technical criticism? Perhaps we should take this to chat; I think it will be easier to have the discussion there. It seems like we have a lot to clarify. $\endgroup$
    – David Z
    Jul 17, 2016 at 14:56
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    $\begingroup$ Re technical criticism, my second and third comments. $\endgroup$ Jul 17, 2016 at 14:58

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