I have a situation where user 1 posted something jerky in an existing topic, then user 2 replied in a nice way, then use 1 posted something jerky in reply.
I’d like to flag off the whole sub-conversation, including user 2’s post, since it’s confusing without context. But I don’t want user 2 to have an “N flagged posts” on their profile, or get a message saying they’d been flagged for inappropriateness. Does anyone have advice on the best technique for handling this?
Thanks!
You could move the conversation to a new topic and hide the whole topic.
Or simply delete user 2’s post without flagging (but maybe with an explanatory PM) - deleted posts on the permanent record don’t really have any effect.
Flagging just the bad post is fine. A moderator will click through to the topic and read it before making a call.
To clarify, I am talking about a different forum where I am a moderator. 
I followed @paulkreuzer’s suggestion, which worked quite well for me!
Oh, got it. You don’t mean you want to flag the posts, you mean you want to act on the flags to hide/remove.
That makes sense.