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A bit of a question and a bit of a PSA for others to potentially avoid the problem I ran into.

This question was originally unclear. The title did not match the question body, and there was (currently is) a comment to that effect. No problem there -- The comment was absolutely correct.

After some clarification with the OP, I ...

  • ... proposed an edit to the title to match the question.
  • ... simultaneously flagged the comment as "no longer needed" based on my proposed edit.

I get now that I probably did the wrong thing. I considered it a "single transaction", when it really wasn't.

The result was that (presumably):

  • A Mod reviewed the flag and declined it. Since my edit had not been accepted yet, I assume the Mod thought that the comment was still valid against the (pre-edit) question, which, of course, it was.
  • My edit was later approved.

No big deal. A declined edit here and there won't kill me ;-).

But at that point, with the flag declined, I'm unable to re-flag the comment as "No longer needed", even though at this point the question body/title do match.

It seems to me based on this that I should have:

  1. Proposed the edit
  2. Waited for the edit to be approved
  3. Then flagged the comment as no-longer-needed

Correct? And I ask this, again, for other users who might run into it (with the understandably slim hopes that they read Meta and happen to remember this ;-)

And, at the same time, could I request a Mod now review that comment and remove it if it's agreed that it is no-longer-needed? Or, if I'm misinterpreting the reason the flag was declined, I'm open to that as well.

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    I agree with the suggested order - if only because it's possible your edit could get rejected (in the general case) for whatever reason, so the flag really does become invalid.
    – muru
    Commented Jan 20, 2022 at 11:38

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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This should work out okay in theory, since when viewing a post one can see that an edit suggestion is pending, though this is indicated in subtle manner (a tiny parenthetical number next to the Edit button) that could be easily missed. One ought to notice this when handling the flag to see if the comment is being made obsolete by the pending edit suggestion. The onus shouldn't be on you to check that your edit got applied and then flag the comment - we should be able to handle that.

However, I have myself made the mistake of declining a flag on a super popular comment before realising that the flagger had made an edit suggestion that incorporated the useful part of the comment into the post in an entirely appropriate way 😳. At least the flagger got their edit points :S

So, yeah, while this is totally our bad, and it should be fine to submit an edit and flag a comment that your edit makes redundant at the same time, mistakes happen (and edit suggestions get rejected too, sometimes wrongly), and if a declined flag is going to ruin your day, you may want to play it safe and flag the comment after the edit gets applied (of course, the flag might still get declined for some wrong or right reason, but at that point this would be only as likely as with any other flag).

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    Cool - Thanks. It's not really the declined flag that bothered me as much as the fact that I couldn't reflag it to fix it after the situation had changed. But I know we can always bring them to Meta to review as I did here. :-)
    – NotTheDr01ds
    Commented Jan 20, 2022 at 12:51
  • Also, since the mod interface doesn't show the pending edit but only the current version of the post and the comment, if the mod who handled the flag didn't actually open the question in a new tab, they would have had no indication that there even was a pending edit.
    – terdon
    Commented Jan 20, 2022 at 16:18
  • @terdon well, since the mod interface only shows the post title and the comment itself (unless the post has flags too), I would argue that if this is insufficient to understand why the flag was raised, one had really better go and look at the context. Sometimes it is obvious that a comment is of no use, but most merit at least a quick look at the page, if only to see whether surrounding comments are equally disposable, imho.
    – Zanna Mod
    Commented Jan 20, 2022 at 17:33
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    @Zanna sure, and ideally all mods would check. Practically however, given the number of flags a site like AU gets per day (and I can only assume this number has grown since the time when I was a mod here), you can't be expected to do this for every flag! So it is very reasonable and understandable that such edge cases can be missed.
    – terdon
    Commented Jan 20, 2022 at 17:35

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