How to handle/dispute a declined flag?

Question

I recently noticed my flagging history had a declined flag. I flagged an answer to a question (Images colors getting distorted) as being "Not an answer" which is defined as...

This was posted as an answer, but it does not attempt to answer the question. It should possibly be an edit, a comment, another question, or deleted altogether.

But it was declined - flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer - the images in the post at the time of flagging clearly showed a corrupted image. I'm fairly sure answering a different question entirely and requesting a clarification of the question definitely fall under the description given for Not an answer.

It's also worth noting that mattdm recommended the answer for deletion in comments.

It's not the end of the world for me, but I'd prefer it wasn't in my flagging history...

Do the flagging reasons/responses need to be expanded/updated or is there a way to dispute that flag so it doesn't show up in my history?

Answer 1

There is no way to remove the declined flag. You can mention it on meta or in chat as feeling it was an error, but the most that can be done is to take action despite the declined flag. The flag still remains declined.

At the end of the day, you don't really need to worry about the occasional declined flag. Everyone has them, and often enough they really are errors, even if just because moderators sometimes hit the wrong button by accident or misunderstand.

As long as you don't have a massive number of invalid flags to valid ones (like upwards of 50%), nobody is going to care or even notice. It isn't really something you need to worry about.

Answer 2

AJ has the right of it. If a moderator looks at the flag, they have a few basic options for decline and that's one of them. In general, I would tend to decline a "not an answer" flag if the person makes what they appear to think is an actual attempt to answer, even it's really off the mark. Voting is the means to handle many of those situations, especially if you think the person has misinterpreted.

In this specific case, the flag decline has "... or an altogether wrong answer" and you noted that it was a wrong answer and that's not quite the same as no answer. If he had left only the clarify question, then yes, that's a comment. In this case, I think the author thought they were answering the question.

In any event, I wouldn't worry about decline history, we all have them. There's no penalty and we don't ignore subsequent flags as a result.