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First off, though my search-fu is strong, I haven't been able to discern if declined flag queries belong on child metas or the main meta. I'm trying here first.


I just had a "not relevant" flag declined on this comment:

This works fine for unicode characters that don't include hex chars A through F. should read: for decimal codes. There are plenty of hexadecimal numbers that don't use A-F. Like 10, which is not ten then... – Arjan Jul 26 '09 at 7:47

As can be seen from the revision history of the question, in Revision 2 the user posting the comment rolled the suggestion into the answer (within 24 hours):

Screenshot showing side-by-side markdown of Revision 2


The rest of the comment is

  1. Used to support the reason for the suggested improvement to the question, and is no longer applicable as the improvement has been rolled in.
  2. Trivial - of course there are hexadecimal numbers that don't use A-F, and of course 10 in hexadecimal is not ten.
  3. Redundant - even if the info in those last two sentences were important (which it is not), this second comment by the same user and this one by another user (both on the question) contain that very same trivial info.


So, why was this flag declined?

Did the moderator who declined the flag fail to notice that the suggestion had been rolled into the answer?

Should I instead raise one of those new-fangled "Something else." flags so that the mod is aware that the comment is "not relevant anymore" as the suggestion has been rolled into the answer? (In case the mod has had a late night and is still bleary-eyed ;-) )

Or is this a result of the new flag wordings causing confusion?

Note that the only reason I flagged comments on this nine year old question is due to it being raised in this recent MSU post: Misleading wrong answer in a popular question

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  • 2
    Its very possible this mod had a late night and was bleary eyed.
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented Aug 6, 2018 at 11:17
  • @JourneymanGeek Are you referring to yourself or the mod who reviewed the flag? (Or both ;-) )
    – robinCTS
    Commented Aug 6, 2018 at 11:19
  • 1
    All we see on flags now is "not relevant" where we used to see "no longer required" which IMO is worse and there is a difference in the meaning of the two phrases. "Not relevant" means it is simply not relevant to the question at hand, "no longer required" means it might have once been relevant but is no longer. I hate this minor but borderline useless UI change.
    – Mokubai Mod
    Commented Aug 6, 2018 at 11:19
  • @Mokubai So, would you prefer a custom flag instead of the generic one? I'm sure I can come up with a half dozen canned messages to cover most of the comment flagging reasons.
    – robinCTS
    Commented Aug 6, 2018 at 11:23
  • 1
    I've made the mental mapping of poor phrasing to actual meaning (as written on the flag) so I'm not too bothered with a custom flag. I just needed to vent a little...
    – Mokubai Mod
    Commented Aug 6, 2018 at 11:28
  • 2
    Vaguely OT but they rolled the flag rename back
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented Aug 7, 2018 at 3:26
  • @JourneymanGeek Yeah! The new wording is much better than even before the previous change.
    – robinCTS
    Commented Aug 7, 2018 at 3:58

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Admittedly - I did have a late night, and was bleary eyed. How did you guess? If I felt I was too zonked out to process flags, I wouldn't - I had reasons.

I felt that without that comment, the rest of the comments lacked context. The comments as a whole feel like they provide context so nuking them all and letting cat sort them out doesn't work for me either.

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  • Having had another good look over the remaining comments after posting my question, I had an inkling this might have been the reason, and I can see your point. Personally, I think that if the current first two comments are deleted, the thread stands up well enough, especially with that last comment referring to the edit history. However, I'm not too fussed (now) either way.
    – robinCTS
    Commented Aug 6, 2018 at 11:30
  • Hmm, interesting. Looks like that last comment has now been deleted ;-) Still, the thread looks good. (Though nuking the whole lot is starting to look more appealing to me now.)
    – robinCTS
    Commented Aug 7, 2018 at 14:31

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