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I encountered a spam answer here and flagged it as such. Here is a copy in metasmoke. Later, I noticed that this type of spam isn't noticed by SmokeDetector; one of the reasons is that the domain (sites.google.com) is used frequently for legitimate purposes. This spammer makes sure their links are bold, so I wanted to try to add a detection for bold links to sites.google.com. To test if this worked, the easiest option was to clear the spam flags (♦ moderators can do that); this unlocks and undeletes the post. After I was done testing, I'd like to spam flag it again; just deleting it isn't enough because that doesn't apply the usual penalties associated with spam (preventing more posts from the same account). However, I'm unable to do so; the system tells me

You have already flagged this post for moderator attention

enter image description here

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    Two things: I've never tried/noticed but can moderators raise the any type of flag on a single post twice, where users can't? In other words, should this be limited to spam only or made more generic? And secondly: This seems like a case of 'you're not supposed to use your tools that way to begin with' :P
    – Tinkeringbell Mod
    Commented May 19, 2021 at 11:48
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    I don't think so, but I haven't tested VLQ/NAA flags. Custom flags can be re-cast by regular users as well. Moderators can vote to close/reopen a question multiple times, where regular users can't, and technically they are flags as well. As for the second point: you're absolutely right, but I was too lazy to reproduce the post in the Sandbox here on Meta.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Commented May 19, 2021 at 11:50
  • I've never tried but I wonder if it's possible to just undelete the post (rather than clearing the flags) and then just delete normally later - it'll have your name against the deletion (which isn't really desirable for spam posts) but it might preserve the penalty...
    – Jon Clements
    Commented May 19, 2021 at 11:57
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    Wouldn't it be better just to ask one of your fellow moderators to flag it? You're part of a team and don't need to be able to do everything yourself. It seems to me that this is one of those cases where having more moderators involved because you're doing something unusual would be better because it lets the rest of the team know why that post has weirdness in its timeline.
    – ColleenV
    Commented May 19, 2021 at 12:29
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    @ColleenV that would only work if they are online. This is spam and should be deleted as soon as possible. On Ask Different, it might take a few minutes; on smaller sites, sometimes a few days. That is not acceptable.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Commented May 19, 2021 at 12:31
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    @Glorfindel You can delete the spam as soon as possible. You just ask another mod to undelete it and flag it as spam when they get a chance. Changing the system to allow double flags has a lot of risk associated with it. How often is a moderator really going to need to do this?
    – ColleenV
    Commented May 19, 2021 at 12:32
  • @ColleenV oh, that would work, but I guess I'm not patient enough for that :)
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Commented May 19, 2021 at 12:35
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    While all the mods I know can be trusted to not abuse being able to flag something multiple times, the limit is there for a reason. If two mods have a disagreement over what should be flagged as spam, they shouldn't be able to just keep flipping the flag. They should have to escalate to someone else to resolve the issue. I think that impatience is not a good enough reason to remove the limit. I think a little bit of pressure toward unusual situations needing the participation of another mod on your team is desirable.
    – ColleenV
    Commented May 19, 2021 at 13:05
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    I think once you clear the Spam flag, you can then delete the post with a R/A flag. This is a bit of a workaround but both kinds of red flags carry the same penalty, and is treated by the system the same way. Unless you need the flag to specifically be Spam, this should work. You won't be able to do this more than once of course.
    – cigien
    Commented May 19, 2021 at 13:11
  • @cigien Unlike regular users, moderators can definitely still raise an R/A flag if their spam flag has been cleared. I've done that on a few/several posts in exactly this circumstance.
    – Makyen
    Commented May 19, 2021 at 16:26
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    Ah, great that R/A flags can still be cast. I'll use that as a workaround.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Commented May 19, 2021 at 16:30
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    While its not 'fair' to make team smokey do all the work - I wonder if an 'alternate' way of reporting these other than undeletion and reflagging might work. Raw markdown or text maybe?
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented May 20, 2021 at 2:59
  • @Glorfindel This is a very good point. The way I see it, it seems as though the system thinks you flagged it and it doesn't want you to flag it twice for the same reason. But the problem here is that you said you already unflagged the spam and then tried to reflag it. So it seems that the issue is the equivalent of a situation where the system wouldn't let you flag it again because it hasn't acknowledged that you unflagged it, which would be an issue. Not sure if that is the case here, but the point is that you unflagged it, so the system shouldn't be trying to stop you from doing it again.
    – Ginger
    Commented May 20, 2021 at 17:46

1 Answer 1

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Workaround: use the other red flag

Until this feature request is implementedA, you can use the following as a workaround: you can raise a different red flag than the one which you previously raised. For example, if you've raised a spam flag on a post, and then need to re-delete it with a red flag, you can raise an R/A flag to delete it again (Note that the post needs to be unlocked prior to re-flagging it). The other way around works as well (spam flag after an R/A flag). Since both Spam and R/A flags carry the same penalties for the user, and are generally treated by the system identically, this should suffice.

So, for reporting to SmokeDetector, as you desired to do, the procedure would be:

  1. Undelete and Unlock the post.
    For this step, you could "clear" (also known as "dispute") the existing red flags, but doing so might send the wrong message to the existing flaggers, so manually undeleting and unlocking is preferred, unless you were the only flagger.
  2. Report the post to SmokeDetector.
    There are a couple/few userscripts which make reporting posts a bit easier (e.g. Advanced Flagging, and SOCVR's Request Generator) , but you can always post a !!/report <post URL> "An optional reason for reporting in double quotes" message in Charcoal HQ.
  3. Wait for SmokeDetector to post the report in Charcoal HQ.
    Waiting for the report to be posted in chat lets you be sure that SmokeDetector is done getting data from the SE API.
  4. Re-delete the post by raising the red flag which you have not previously raised.

A. Whether this feature request to allow moderators to re-spam flag is worth implementing will depend on how commonly this is needed, especially given the workaround that's available. I've definitely seen moderators wanting to clear red flags for various reasons (usually for testing detections as in your case, or to be able to report a post to SmokeDetector in order to have a record of that spam), but I don't recall seeing a case where that was needed twice. This situation is probably rare enough that it's easiest to just coordinate with another site moderator or a CM when you want to do that.

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    This creates behavioral differences on sites with review audits enabled (spam posts are generally eligible for audit selection while R/A posts generally aren't), and in the case of answers, R/A flagged ones don't count toward auto-protection of the question while spam-flagged ones do.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Nov 9, 2021 at 18:52

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