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I flagged this question with the comment "impossible to answer".

The flag was declined with the message:

flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention

Then a while later it was put on hold:

put on hold as primarily opinion-based by Phil, RolandoMySQLDBA, Marian, RLF, Colin 't Hart 1 hour ago

What should i have done in another way?

Edit: maybe it's a language issue? What I maybe meant is "this is impossible for us to answer in your place"?

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  • It could have also been closed with the off-topic reason " Tip of the iceberg - the question or comments reveal an underlying issue that would need extensive investigation by a consultant or database vendor support team: issues like this do not fit the SE Q&A model well. For more information see this meta post."
    – ypercubeᵀᴹ
    May 7, 2015 at 18:21
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    To answer your question, they declined your flag because there was no need for mod intervention in this question. As is obvious from the outcome, the question was closed by the votes of other users. I don't know, maybe if you had a more detailed comment, something like "impossible to answer because it's too broad or too localized or ...", the mod might have chosen to act otherwise.
    – ypercubeᵀᴹ
    May 7, 2015 at 18:23
  • Another question: was the flag marked as helpful or not?
    – ypercubeᵀᴹ
    May 7, 2015 at 18:25
  • No it was declined, unless I'm missing something I don't see what you mean by the difference between "put on hold because opinion based" and "closed by votes". Unless it can be helpful and still declined but then I don't see where I get that info
    – Tom V
    May 7, 2015 at 18:29
  • It's in your flag summary But I was wrong, it probably can't be declined and deemed helpful at the same time. I don't know where I got that idea from.
    – ypercubeᵀᴹ
    May 7, 2015 at 18:44
  • I suppose I should have been more clear in the comments indeed
    – Tom V
    May 7, 2015 at 20:00

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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I declined the flag, because I took it at face value - "impossible to answer" seemed to me to require domain knowledge that there is no reason to assume a moderator should have.

Community closure seems to me to be the correct result here, don't you agree?

Please don't hesitate to flag content that you think requires moderator attention - but the process of accepting or declining flags is part of a useful (if imperfect) feedback mechanism between flagger and moderator that helps make the process more efficient.

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  • Thanks for the feedback, I guess I mainly needed to choose a better description.
    – Tom V
    May 8, 2015 at 6:38
  • Possibly, yes. it's also not usually necessary for a mod to close any question - we clear out the garbage rather than fine-tune stuff. Once a close vote has been cast the review queue gets lots of eyeballs on the question. The Heap is also a great place to bring up stuff like this, and questions posted in there often get dealt with double quick. Thanks for your efforts cleaning up the site - 3k rep will mean you can also VtC yourself ;)
    – Jack Douglas
    May 8, 2015 at 10:03

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