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I just got a message that one of my flags got declined.

It was a spam flag for a post on an old question that had no purpose other than promoting an external service.

The answer got deleted, but my flag declined. Is there a way to tell the reason or argue against it?

I found this question, but in my case it was a new user that posted nothing but external links, IIRC the software promoted in the link didn't even have anything to do with the question asked.

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    Hopefully, you understand that a single flag being declined isn't a big deal. Moderators are human, limited by the tools they are given, to handle flags.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Aug 10, 2018 at 14:16
  • Do declined flags have impact on my ability to use the site in any way? If not it's not a big deal, just wondering if this was an issue on my end and if yes why.
    – confetti
    Commented Aug 10, 2018 at 14:20
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    A single declined flag will have zero impact. It would only become a problem if the moderators declined multiple flags, but all that would happen is you would be unable to flag contributions. The most likely scenario is a moderator didn't agree with your flag, but independently from that moderator, multiple community users voted to delete the post. The result was that a different moderator, other than the first moderator, deleted the contribution based on the votes of the community. In other words, it's possible the answer wasn't actually a spam answer but was simply an answer that was bad.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Aug 10, 2018 at 14:22

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Your flag was declined because while they were a new user there was no indication that they were affiliated with the product being mentioned and as such did not meet the flag comment which states

spam

  • Exists only to promote a product or service, does not disclose the author's affiliation.

The actual content of the deleted answer (10k rep link) was

I did Googled nircmd.exe and it's referring to this webpage: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html which is a tool for "Edit, merge and fix the AutoComplete files (.NK2) of Microsoft Outlook." Surely this is not for controlling the brightness steps of Windows.

Also this is not an hardware issue because the 1% brightness steps can be done within the Control Panel's settings. Surely a software design issue, please use Windows's feedback hub to upvote similar issues / submit your own.

It was not advertising. It was primarily commenting that the description for the tool, which itself was mentioned by the already existing answer, on its website is not describing a solution for the problem that was asked. As it was nothing more than commentary it was flagged by other users as "not an answer" and was deleted as such.

Your flag was declined so as not to unnecessarily feed the spam filter with stuff that isn't spam. Spam flags apply several penalties as mentioned in the answer to the question you linked and there was no crime beyond posting commentary as an answer.

What are the “spam” and “rude or abusive” (offensive) flags, and how do they work?

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  • Understood. Thank you a lot for taking the time to explain everything to me.
    – confetti
    Commented Aug 10, 2018 at 14:56
  • You are welcome. As mentioned by other users above a single declined flag here and there is nothing to worry about but because spam flags are much more harsh than other types of flag we take their handling very seriously. You'd have seen a warning about raising bad flags if you were close to a flag ban. We also do have a small background hum of spam going on, but it is usually a bit more blatant than this. They're getting more constructive and almost sneaky, but they are still very obviously vehicles for linking rubbish rather than constructive answers or questions. xkcd.com/810
    – Mokubai Mod
    Commented Aug 10, 2018 at 15:17

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