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I flagged a comment an hour ago as it was rude. I just checked it now and my flag appears to be removed, yet the comment deleted.

Is there any reason why this happened? Is this due to a bug?

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    $\begingroup$ It might have been deleted for another reason. Flags for abuse (spam and excessive rudeness) carry a special penalty when they are moderator approved. I've not had that experience (rudeness flagged on Comments declined), but it has happened that my flag for Moderators was declined on Answer posts that were ultimately validated by Community votes to delete. $\endgroup$
    – hardmath
    Apr 26, 2019 at 17:51

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Moderators can only delete, dismiss, or edit a comment. We can't even add a reason if it was helpful or unhelpful.

While you can retract (and reflag) posts, you cannot do that for comments. So in the case of comments, I might disagree with the flag, as a whole, but agree that the comment should be deleted.

The reason I decline in such cases is to signal the user "this is not the appropriate flag". Hopefully, they will notice that the comment was indeed deleted, and infer that the idea of flagging it was correct, but the execution faltered.

Yes, this method sucks. But it's the best we have at the moment. I'm all ears to suggestions on how to improve it.

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    $\begingroup$ Maybe allow someone to retract flags, no one wants to waste a mod's time. For future note: the user asked the answerer if the answerer had downvoted the user's post in an aggressive tone (in my opinion). How should I tag it? $\endgroup$
    – For the love of maths
    Apr 26, 2019 at 19:32
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    $\begingroup$ The features are not up to me. As far as flagging it, "No longer necessary" is probably enough. As far as the comment, I disagree that it was an aggressive tone. But that's something you see as a moderator, how broad and varied is the range of people thinking that something sounds aggressive. And sometimes you tend to agree, and sometimes you think that it's just a cultural difference or an interpretation of the reader. And of course, this also depends on the moderator handling the flag... $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Apr 26, 2019 at 19:36

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