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Offensive

The "offensive" flag is for content that does not constitute an answer and which a reasonable person would consider egregiously offensive, such as

• hate speech directed against a race, gender, etc.
• direct threats of violence against a specific person
• exposing sensitive personal information (real name, location, mailing address, email address, phone number, age, gender, etc.) against the owner's wishes - what other sites often call "doxxing"

• hate speech directed against a race, gender, etc.
• direct threats of violence against a specific person
• exposing sensitive personal information (real name, location, mailing address, email address, phone number, age, gender, etc.) against the owner's wishes (a.k.a. "doxxing")

• links to related resources or potential duplicate questions where the comments are less than a week old
• suggestions for improving the post which are less than a week old and which the poster has not yet responded to
• active discussions which are expected to result in a suggestion for improving the post
• any comments simply because you disagree with them

Your flag gets declined. This is not a big deal. It just reflects a difference of opinion between the flagger and the handling moderator (and the mods do accidentally click the wrong button on rare occasions). Everybody gets flags declined from time to time, and there are no lasting consequences.

Rude or abusive

The "rude or abusive" flag is for content that does not constitute an answer and which a reasonable person would consider egregiously offensive, such as

• hate speech directed against a race, gender, etc.
• direct threats of violence against a specific person
• exposing sensitive personal information (real name, location, mailing address, email address, phone number, age, gender, etc.) against the owner's wishes - what other sites often call "doxxing"
• content which could reasonably be considered abuse of the system like nonsensical gibberish (though you can also use "very low quality" or "not an answer" for this sort of thing)

• hate speech directed against a race, gender, etc.
• direct threats of violence against a specific person
• exposing sensitive personal information (real name, location, mailing address, email address, phone number, age, gender, etc.) against the owner's wishes (a.k.a. "doxxing")
• content which could reasonably be considered abuse of the system like nonsensical gibberish (though you can also use "no longer needed" for this sort of thing)

• links to related resources or potential duplicate questions where the comments are less than a week old
• suggestions for improving the post which are less than a week old and which the poster has not yet responded to
• active discussions which are expected to result in a suggestion for improving the post
• anything where the only reason for flagging is that you disagree with it

Your flag gets declined. This is not a big deal. It just reflects a difference of opinion between the flagger and the handling moderator. (Plus the mods do accidentally click the wrong button from time to time.) Everybody gets flags declined from time to time, and there are no lasting consequences.

• answers referencing a relevant physics paper or publication (including blog posts), even if the poster is the author of the publication
• offensive content (see below)
• wrong answers
• answers based on non-mainstream physics

For obvious reasons, I'm hiding the examples in a spoiler tag. Hover over the quote boxes to see sample offensive answers.

Rude or offensive

Not constructive

The "not constructive" flag is for comments which do not contribute to the goal of clarifying or improving their parent post, such as

• followup questions which should be asked independently

Do not use this flag for

• links to related resources or potential duplicate questions
• suggestions for improving the post

Examples:

-

This is the only correct answer.

You're not a physicist, why should I believe anything you write?

There is very little difference between how the "not constructive", "too chatty", and "obsolete" flags are handled, so if you believe a comment should be flagged as one of those three, don't spend much time worrying about which one of the three reasons to pick.

Too chatty

The "too chatty" flag is for comments which constitute idle discussion unrelated to the post, such as

• "+1 great post!" or "-1 this is wrong" or anything along those lines, unless the comment also includes an explanation
• greetings, thanks, and pleasantries
• anecdotes, stories, jokes, links to XKCD comics

Do not use this flag for

• discussions which are expected to result in a suggestion for improving the post
• followup questions (which may produce a clarification)

Examples:

-

I joined this site just to upvote your post. Great job!

Thanks for the upvote!

There is very little difference between how the "not constructive", "too chatty", and "obsolete" flags are handled, so if you believe a comment should be flagged as one of those three, don't spend much time worrying about which one of the three reasons to pick.

Obsolete

The "obsolete" flag is for comments that have served their purpose or outlived their usefulness, such as

• suggestions for changes which have been incorporated into the post, or which the poster has explicitly declined to make
• requests for clarification which have been answered, and their answers
• back-and-forth discussions which are no longer active
• responses to comments which have been deleted
• pretty much any comment older than a week or so

• active discussions
• comments you disagree with

Whether a comment is eligible for the "obsolete" flag depends entirely on its context, not its content, so it would be pointless to provide examples.

There is very little difference between how the "not constructive", "too chatty", and "obsolete" flags are handled, so if you believe a comment should be flagged as one of those three, don't spend much time worrying about which one of the three reasons to pick.

Other

The "other" flag, or the "flag for moderator attention", is for anything that does not fit into one of the above categories.

Your flag gets declined. This is not a big deal. There are no lasting consequences.

• answers relevant to the question which reference a relevant physics paper or publication (including blog posts), even if the poster is the author of the publication
• offensive content (see below)
• wrong answers
• answers based on non-mainstream physics

I'm hiding the examples in spoiler tags in case anyone would rather not read them. Hover over the quote boxes to see sample offensive answers.

Rude or abusive

No longer needed

The "no longer needed" flag is for any comments which do not help clarify or improve their parent post. It combines what used to be "obsolete", "not constructive", and "too chatty" (which were always kind of hard to distinguish anyway).

Despite the name, this flag should be used both for comments that used to be useful, but are not anymore, and for comments that were never useful in the first place. Here is a nonexhaustive list of comment types you should use this flag for:

• "+1 great post!" or "-1 this is wrong" or anything along those lines given without further explanation
• greetings, thanks, and pleasantries
• anecdotes, stories, jokes, links to XKCD comics
• suggestions for changes which have been incorporated into the post
• suggestions which the poster has explicitly declined to make
• requests for clarification which have been answered
• clarifications given in response to such requests
• back-and-forth discussions which are no longer active
• responses to any comments which have been deleted
• pretty much any comment older than a week or so (which is an implicit indication that the poster has declined to act on the comment)
• followup questions which should be asked independently

• links to related resources or potential duplicate questions where the comments are less than a week old
• suggestions for improving the post which are less than a week old and which the poster has not yet responded to
• active discussions which are expected to result in a suggestion for improving the post
• any comments simply because you disagree with them

Examples:

-

This is the only correct answer.

You're not a physicist, why should I believe anything you write?

I joined this site just to upvote your post. Great job!

Thanks for the upvote!

Moderator intervention

The "in need of moderator intervention" flag is for any comment that needs flagging and does not fit into one of the above categories. These will be rare. Spam is the main example I can think of.

Do not use this flag for

• any comments simply because you disagree with them

Your flag gets declined. This is not a big deal. It just reflects a difference of opinion between the flagger and the handling moderator (and the mods do accidentally click the wrong button on rare occasions). Everybody gets flags declined from time to time, and there are no lasting consequences.

• suggestions for changes which have been incorporated into the post
• suggestions for changes which the poster has explicitly declined to make
• requests for clarification which have been answered
•   answers to requests for clarification
• back-and-forth discussions which are no longer active
• pretty much any comment older than a week or so

• suggestions for changes which have been incorporated into the post, or which the poster has explicitly declined to make
• requests for clarification which have been answered, and their answers
• back-and-forth discussions which are no longer active
• responses to comments which have been deleted
• pretty much any comment older than a week or so