btw, I was hoping to talk to a moderator, I am confused why a few of my previous NAA flags were declined; perhaps if any of the mods can show me the light for the reasons of declining the flags; it'll be appreciated

any mod?

Most of the time we don’t deal with NAA flags. The only time I handle them is when it’s blatantly not an answer, in which case I delete it (which will automatically mark the flag as helpful).

If your NAA flag was declined, there’s a good possibility that it was because it went into the low quality posts review queue and other members of the community disagreed with you.

I can’t speak for the exact flags, because I did not look into it, but this is generally true. Same with VLQ flags.

thanks for your reply! well, I was trying to abide by this rule: "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." and then flagging the answer

@orthocresol the panel says "declined - a moderator reviewed your flag, but found no evidence to support it" though :/

these are the two cases: chemistry.stackexchange.com/a/93771/5026 and chemistry.stackexchange.com/a/28148/5026

the first link should've been better as a comment, it's exactly repeating what had been said in the comments; the second link does not attempt to answer the question; at least that's what I thought

if you could kindly review them both once, please do; thanks!

hm

for the first case, I can agree with the declined flag; just because an answer is short, it does not make it not an answer

There is really not much to say in this question apart from "it is a phenyl group".

The second case is less clear cut. I think that often people do not review NAA flags carefully, and if the answer looks reasonably well-presented, people will think that it's an answer even if it does not address the question at hand.

I have had a few NAA flags declined by the community in this way.

or disputed

For example, this is not an answer, as it does not address the molecule in question at all, instead talking about two unrelated molecules.

I think this may have been the case here. The answer looks fairly ok at first glance and the tendency would therefore be to reject an NAA flag (I do not think that you would have been much more successful going through the review queue).

Technically, the first sentence answers the question: the question is asking "is this possible" and the answer says "It is possible, but must fulfill certain criteria". So, technically speaking, it is an answer. I think it is a crappy one, though, that does not lend any insight into the crux of the matter.

@orthocresol i agree with you here, that's why I also left a comment, hoping to make the cause of NAA more explicit

Yup, but especially when the answer is so long, your comment is less likely to be seen

@orthocresol yeah, that's right as well

I'm not saying that that's the way it should be, but rather that's the way it currently is

:/

very true

well, i understood the possible reasons of an NAA flag declination, and will keep them in mind from now on, but what is to be done with that answer though?

that question has 4k views

My guess is to downvote, leave a comment, and move on. That is the best one can do

short of writing an answer yourself, of course

I wonder if I can find an example of sequential shifts. I'm sure there are some, but I can't list them off the top of my head right now

@orthocresol the second answer there gives one example

@orthocresol well, see if you can write one please! :)

That's not necessarily sequential, though.

I think it is concerted

oh!

And I don't know why I +1'd that answer.

lol

Btw it could be more helpful if you pinged one of us directly - instead of asking any mod

More helpful for you, to be precise

For the simple reason that we see pings, but we don't necessarily see the full chat room transcript

yeah but i didn't wish to disturb any single mod too much so...nvm though

@orthocresol since you're here, just one thing more:

i got two of my flags recently declined

"declined - a moderator reviewed your flag, but found no evidence to support it"

on chem.meta.se

things don't necessarily have to be tagged with status-xx

when something is implemented, it is status-completed

when we don't want to do something, it is status-declined

but there is not always consensus, you will find that reaching consensus on meta is not a trivial task, and even if we do, many things will still fall under "maybe it would be nice to do this but we either don't have the means to or can't be bothered to"

I will warn you about flagging on meta, we don't like it all that much, we do not curate and tidy up meta.

as such, even if your flags are justified, they may not necessarily be accepted

it is nice to be systematic and have everything put in their rightful place, but at the same time being too... rigid about how things should be, also stifles discussion and turns people away. It is for this reason that we try to keep meta fairly lax on what is allowed in comments, tagging, etc.

okay, makes sense!