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This answer was brought to my attention by a late answer marked for review. I look for duplicates or comments when I see late answers, and I noticed the recent late answer would benefit from including information instead of the link, otherwise okay, edited.

When I flagged the answer in question above as not an answer because it is a comment agreeing with another answer, I was warned that the flag was declined by a mod. Usually I understand when I see this happen, but I've never had a flag declined here and wonder what I missed.

This is just part of the accepted and top answer with explanation:

les propositions de « on récolte ce que l'on sème » (qui existe en anglais sous la même forme : « you reap what you sow »)

This is the answer that I flagged in its entirety, which was posted three years after other answers:

L'expression qui me semble la plus juste est : On récolte ce qu'on sème.

This is also seen in comments here on the same page.

Why was this not a good flag? Isn't it a duplicate, a comment on another answer with no supporting or additional information?

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To me the wording of the flag ("it does not attempt to answer the question") did not seem to apply. It does attempt to answer the question, and is a valid answer, if low-quality: short, with no explanation. I don't see the fact that it overlaps with Gilles' answer as meaning that its form is that of a comment on said answer.

On a closer reading of that thread, I note that several answers are low-quality. I see that they have been dealt with either by being ignored, by being deleted by mods, or by being downvoted to the bottom. I suppose that because of the redundancy of the answer in question, it might as well be deleted. So I've done so.

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  • Merci Luke. Isn't that the trouble, the wording for flagging answers at that point? The community missed the late answer checkpoint then, but when I flag it now, NAA is the closest reason. Since the post comments on what is best about the other (three year old) answers at first glance may seem like an attempt to answer, is that why my flag was declined? When you look closer per the review standards, what would you recommend? I don't understand being penalized for bringing this to mod attention, but I thank you for looking deeper into the issue now. Merci en tout cas !
    – livresque
    Mar 24 at 19:45
  • @livresque Yes, that's the reason since it was me who declined it. Can you explain "being penalized"? Help me out as a mod: when I decline a flag, do you just get the notification or do you get some restricted privilege, loss of rep, etc.? If so, that makes me think harder about declining flags.
    – Luke Sawczak Mod
    Mar 24 at 19:47
  • As for what I would recommend, to be honest I would just downvote the answer and leave the comment that you left. I deleted it because I'm ambivalent, but I don't think it's necessary to do so in general; I think downvotes should take care of that kind of answer on their own once the -3 threshold is hit and the answer gets hidden through automatic moderation. (Of course, on an ancient question, it may never get enough attention to get the necessary -3 votes; but by the same token, it may never get enough attention to be a real problem anyhow.)
    – Luke Sawczak Mod
    Mar 24 at 19:48
  • In Re: penalizing, I got a notification later in the review queue to take caution because a recent flag had been declined. Apparently if your flags are declined too much they don't carry as much weight, which over time makes sense. You get but so many flags a day but we don't really have the traffic unless someone starts going through and marking a million old answers as LQ. This was the first! As someone who weights grades with more calcs than percentages, I get it but.... Since you now have looked into it, oughtn't there be a better way to avoid review burnout?
    – livresque
    Mar 24 at 20:02
  • I appreciate you being forthcoming about this; that's how we can figure it out! Assuming you saw only the answer I flagged when you declined it as opposed to reading the entire page then, that makes a difference and is the main cause of review burnout. Context. If my flags end up being worth less, despite my reading the whole page before flagging, which you ended up having to do after, we're working double towards the same thing but entre l'enclume et le marteau.
    – livresque
    Mar 24 at 20:13
  • @livresque I suppose the mechanism by which your flags would "carry less weight" is that mods would notice frivolous flags from one user and, in a human way, deprioritize them. In this case I would not have such a reaction myself, knowing that it was a fairly reasonable flag (even if I didn't take the time to have the full context).
    – Luke Sawczak Mod
    Mar 26 at 4:04
  • As for review burnout, we get so few flags (from 0-1 a day most days, up to 3-4 on days when certain users harass each other) that between three mods, there's little chance of there being too many to cope with. If there's any burnout it comes from the rest of life :) It's certainly a failing on my part not to have read more of the context than just the question and the answer in this case, especially when you had done so.
    – Luke Sawczak Mod
    Mar 26 at 4:06

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