Why would a staff member choose to flag but not take action immediately?

Community
1

If an admin or a mod flags a message “offtopic” but not takes action immediately, a red counter appears, which is seen immediately by the admin or mod who just flagged.

Suppose I, an admin, just flagged.
Now I see the red counter which asks me to review the flag and take action.

Once I tried to do so, other admins and mods asked me “why did I flag and not take any action”.

And now I’m asking myself - what is the purpose and how it should work? How these two scenarios are different and where to use each.

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2

Here are a few reasons you might want to do that

  • you want other moderators to review it before you take action
  • you don’t have time to do a proper review and want to leave it in the queue for later
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3

What if it is a “spam flag”, and someone from the mods clicks “Postpone” button… Will 2 more spam flags (now total of 3) lead to an action taken automatically?

In other words, will all spam flags be counted to check with the threshold, or non-postponed flags only?

8

Yes, staff flags are just like regular flags if you do not choose to take action immediately. As @zogstrip correctly indicated, a staff member might flag a post to get more opinions from other staff about the post. Sometimes it’s a collaborative process.

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