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I've made a few changes to my moderation and metamoderation workflow recently that improve quality of life for me. This includes using the standard SE keyboard short cuts (and macros for them) more. I can flag questions (M F 1).

I'm wondering, is there a keyboard shortcut based way I can flag a specific answer to a question?

If not might this be considered?

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  • You can use the J key to advance to answers.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Jul 13 at 0:15
  • That would work. Now all I need is a spammer with answers ;)
    – Journeyman Geek
    Commented Jul 13 at 1:37
  • Yup. J for next, K for previous. I'd say that + the standard key combo would be an answer @SonictheAnonymousHedgehog
    – Journeyman Geek
    Commented Jul 13 at 1:39
  • 1
    No need for shortcut when there is a 5-second rate limit on flagging posts... SE isn't made for efficiency.
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Commented Jul 13 at 1:48
  • You'd be surprised - I'm hitting rate limits less now with initial tests since I'm including intentional, small delays in my keypresses in macros. Its less a 'time' thing than a 'effort' thing.
    – Journeyman Geek
    Commented Jul 13 at 1:55
  • @JourneymanGeek You have much more patience for pointless delays than I do.
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Commented Jul 14 at 1:48
  • I worked it into my workflow at this point. The point here is not to leave my keyboard, or to be able to run macros. For the former, I'm unlikely to hit the 5 second limit on a flag. I do hit those on account deletions(since I have to batch them but my current workflow takes that into account)
    – Journeyman Geek
    Commented Jul 14 at 2:01

1 Answer 1

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There is no keyboard shortcut for selecting a specific answer.

However, M Will auto-select the top post in the current viewport. Thus, you can often use it to flag any answer - scroll to the one you want, then press M and the F will open the flag menu for that answer. Example (spoilers to avoid the annoyance of constantly moving GIF):

Open a Q&A, scroll down to see an answer. Hitting M will auto-select the answer.

But beware - it is the top post in the viewport. That might be one you barely see but is technically on top:

Open a Q&A, scroll down to see an answer. However, the bottom of a comment on the question is still visible. Hitting M will auto-select the question in this case.

This can be a problem with bigger monitors, since you might never be able to auto-select the last answer, for example.

You can move the selection manually with

  • J - next post (down). When nothing is initially selected, it select the top post in the viewport.
  • K - previous post (up). When nothing is initially selected, it selects the bottom post in the viewport.

Both of these have the same issue that they work by viewport and thus they might not select what you want, depending on what is visible. And for larger monitors (looking at smaller posts), you might not even have a lot of control for what is visible. So, to pinpoint a specific post might be hard.

If building macros, you can have some control to select the Nth answer on the page. Start by U and then add J N times to get to that position in the answers. So, UJ for the first one UJJ for the second, etc.

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