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Possible Duplicate:
Flag declined, but question closed for the same reason

So I flagged this question as exact duplicate yesterday (my time) and today I came back and noted that the flag was "disputed". I though that it was odd and so I open the question only to see it was closed as exact duplicate with the same question that I had linked.

so my question really is: was there a moderator that made a mistake and click "disputed" instead of "helpful" or something?

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    Oh, disputed means someone saw your flag (or some other flag on the post) and decided they didn't agree. That has no effect on the close votes however, which could have proceeded independent of the flagging. In either case, when there's a dispute, nobody's flag weight changes, see meta.stackexchange.com/questions/95275/what-is-a-disputed-flag Commented Aug 31, 2011 at 6:57
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    Thus the most likely sequence of events was a 10k user disputed your flag, then a mod saw the flags and decided to close the topic, but since your flag was disputed, there was no change to flag weight. Commented Aug 31, 2011 at 6:58
  • @troyen between you and slugster I now understand that close votes and flags are different. Thanks. Commented Aug 31, 2011 at 7:00
  • Its the "Not THIS question again" robot: static1.robohash.com/Not%20THIS%20question%20again Commented Aug 31, 2011 at 14:03

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Flagging a question as a duplicate is for those who either cannot use the Close button due to not having enough rep, or who have run out of close votes for the day.

This means people can use the Close button and accumulate the required close votes regardless of who has flagged the question. A mod may still look at it due to it being flagged, but in any case the correct action has already been taken.

You may find that the flag was disputed because someone considered that it wasn't an exact duplicate of the question you nominated - not that it matters, enough people with close votes considered the question to be close enough.

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  • between you and troyen I now understand that close votes and flags are different. Thanks Commented Aug 31, 2011 at 7:00
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Disputed means that a another non-moderator user with more than 10k rep disagreed with your flag and marked that they considered it invalid. This doesn't effect your flag score and doesn't remove it from the moderator queue (so a mod still has to deal with or ignore it).

If a moderator had dismissed your flag it would show up as Declined (which is what used to be called Invalid until recently).

A flag can receive either action independently of the question being closed (either by community vote or moderator)

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