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I've flagged, voted for deletion and down-voted this but it's still here after 27 hours. Are the review queue's inactive, or do the participants feel this is a proper stackexchange answer?

I've added "rocket-shaped" arrows to indicate the parts that make me feel it's not a serious answer, but since it's not even close to a proper answer even without the annotated items, aren't these usually deleted or moved to comments fairly quickly?

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Interestingly I'm only seeing one flag in July so far in my "helpful flags"; second screen shot (below) at 06-Jul-2017 13:39 UTC

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For questions like that, flag it for moderator attention, don't just hit the delete button and count on people paying attention to the review queues. It's now appropriately managed.

Looking at the flagging history, I can see that it was flagged by uhoh at 4:07 UTC, and the flag was responded to at 12:40 UTC. That pretty much happened in the middle of the night, so only 8 hours. I can see that a delete vote was cast earlier. It might be that the flag type was one of those that moderators don't see immediately and wasn't included in the history (I think low quality isn't reviewed immediately)

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    $\begingroup$ Not only did I flag it, I'm pretty sure I flagged it twice, and flagged the comment as well, and then mentioned flagging it in my question above. Are you telling me none of the flags reached the moderators' attention? If so, then we have quite a mystery on our hands! $\endgroup$ – uhoh Jul 6 '17 at 13:17
  • $\begingroup$ If the moderators did not see these, please let me know and we'll have to escalate as a bug. Is it possible they were seen but someone got caught up in another task before following through? Interestingly I'm only seeing one flag in July so far in my "helpful flags"; screen shot 06-Jul-2017 13:39 UTC i.stack.imgur.com/Df7ir.png $\endgroup$ – uhoh Jul 6 '17 at 13:28
  • $\begingroup$ Can I get you to adjust your wording? Right now it looks like you are suggesting that I didn't flag the question. Let's find the root cause, but this is not it. $\endgroup$ – uhoh Jul 6 '17 at 13:43
  • $\begingroup$ @uhoh I think it's only fair to mention that the question was posted right after a summer long weekend that included a major holiday for our American members. Our core members who do most of the reviewing were simply less active, including but not limited to the moderators. This is part of the downside of being a small stack exchange - sometimes things take longer. We are all volunteers, after all. $\endgroup$ – kim holder Jul 6 '17 at 13:52
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    $\begingroup$ @kimholder that's more than fair to mention, that helps because then we wouldn't have to start searching for a bug. Thanks. I'm still uncomfortable with the wording of the answer "...don't just hit the delete button and count on people paying attention to the review queues". Anyway the moderation in this SE site is really excellent! Maybe I'm so accustomed to it that a hiccup stands out. $\endgroup$ – uhoh Jul 6 '17 at 13:57
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    $\begingroup$ @uhoh There may actually be a bug. I didn't see a flag on that. $\endgroup$ – called2voyage♦ Jul 6 '17 at 14:25
  • $\begingroup$ @called2voyage I don't have screen shots with time staps unfortunately, I'll do that from now on. I have SE open on my phone (in Safari browser, not the app) much of the time, and simultaneously frequent login/logouts in Safari on my laptop. I have also found several comments for which I thought I should have been notified, but didn't receive a notification. I'll start keeping careful notes. Thanks for the info! $\endgroup$ – uhoh Jul 6 '17 at 14:39
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    $\begingroup$ @uhoh If comment flags are dismissed (not sure about others) you don't receive a notification. If you click the "helpful flags" link on your user page, you can see how each flag you issued was handled. $\endgroup$ – called2voyage♦ Jul 6 '17 at 14:47
  • $\begingroup$ The problem is, I can't remember when I checked the site to clear flags. It might have been that I logged on just after you made the flag, and was the only moderator that had been on in that period. But I'm fairly sure that I would have seen a flag in the 27 hour period of time that the flag went unanswered. Actually, I suspect you flagged it as "Low Quality", which I think goes in to a queue that moderators don't see for a while. Hmmm... $\endgroup$ – PearsonArtPhoto♦ Jul 6 '17 at 15:02
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    $\begingroup$ Okay, I looked at the history. There were a few flags about 8 hours before they were responded too. I edited a bit of the timeline in to include. $\endgroup$ – PearsonArtPhoto♦ Jul 6 '17 at 15:09
  • $\begingroup$ @PearsonArtPhoto I'm wondering if I flagged the question twice for exactly the same reason, would the 2nd flag somehow overwrite the timestamp of first one? I'm pretty sure I flagged about 24 hours ago as well as the 9-hour-ago time frame, but I'm only 90% sure, not 100%. $\endgroup$ – uhoh Jul 6 '17 at 15:12
  • $\begingroup$ It didn't show up in the history, so... Not really sure. $\endgroup$ – PearsonArtPhoto♦ Jul 6 '17 at 15:46
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    $\begingroup$ @uhoh It's possible that your second flag attempt removed the first flag attempt. I've tried to flag a post before, not remembering that I'd already flagged it, and the box that shows up is actually for removing the flag, not setting it. I think (hope) that I've always caught the difference, but can't be sure I've noticed it every time. So, you might have canceled you flag rather than reinforcing it. $\endgroup$ – user20122 Jul 8 '17 at 4:30
  • $\begingroup$ @GypsySpellweaver I didn't know there was such a function (flag self-cancellation), thanks for mentioning it. It would be great if there was a sandbox version of SE available to users to set up a bunch of scenarios and test SE behavior. There are things (like this) where it wouldn't make sense to add every possible scenario and expected behavior to the general SE help or documentation, but it would be nice to try things out to see what happens. Still waiting for Stackexchange, the Movie! $\endgroup$ – uhoh Jul 8 '17 at 5:03
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Here's my proposed reconstruction of what happened.

  • 2017-07-05 04:31 UTC objectionable answer posted.

  • Soon after (maybe an hour?) I flagged the answer. Usually this is all that's necessary for something to "get disappeared" quickly. It's been a while since I've been home, so I forgot this was a holiday/vacation period in some places.

  • 2017-07-06 02:55 UTC noticed the answer was still there, so decided to escalate. Marked for deletion, down voted, and re-flag in case I hadn't already flagged or the flag didn't "take"; however there is no such thing as re-flagging! Below is an example of what happens. A similar dialogue box opens, with a similar set of radio buttons from which to select the type of flag, and a big "action" button at the lower right, but the action is to cancel or remove the flag unless one selects a different radio button. So after 20+ hours of being flagged, the second action removed the flag and possibly removed traces of the initial flagging.

Conclusions:

Because the moderation activity here is so speedy and efficient, I was surprised when the flag wasn't acted on quickly. In my attempt to flag again in case my first flag didn't take, or that I hadn't flagged, I removed the flag by not looking closely at the dialogue box and noticing that even though there were options, the active action was to remove the flag. Now there's no record of it.

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above: what a flagging dialogue box looks like.

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above: what the dialogue box looks like if you click flag a second time

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above: what the reassuring message looks like if you click "Retract". Same color and shape as the "We'll look into it" message, except that it now says the opposite.

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