invalid flag: declined

Question

I just had a look at my flag history. There are several points I don't understand.

These are not flags which I have "created" but such which I have handled in the flag queue.

There was this answer by vonbrand.

My flag history says:

"invalid flags – Hauke Laging Mar 3 at 3:36 disputed - a moderator reviewed your flag, but found no evidence to support it"

The answer is still there. I don't know whether and where I can see how this answer was flagged. But it seems that whatever it was I stated that the flag was wrong and the answer OK. "disputed - a moderator reviewed your flag, but found no evidence to support it" would make sense with respect to the original flag only IMHO. Is this a kind of bug? The system sees my "invalid flag" as "flag", too, and because the mod decides to leave the answer alone I get this message (which doesn't make sense in my case)?

Another point: That there is a "helpful" or "declined" for every entry makes the impression that all flags have been checked by a moderator. I thought that my confirmation of a flag (by a user with too little rep to cast votes) just turns the flag into a close (or leave open) vote. Why should a moderator look at that? Close votes work without a moderator, too. But maybe it works this way and the message just means "The voting decision was according / against yours".

Answer 1

See this post on MSO for the first part. Yes, it's a bit confusing. The only possible "resolution" for an invalid-flags flag is disputed. And if the original flag gets declined with a reason, you get to see that too - sometimes. (i.e. you get to see what the moderator chose as a reason to decline the original flag.) I say sometimes because you won't see a message for flags that get dismissed automatically, and I don't think you'll see custom messages from the moderator.

With 3k rep, you can't cast a close flag. You can only vote to close (if you have close votes left) or use a custom flag. When you cast a close vote following someone's close flag (from 10k tools), the original close flag doesn't get transformed into a close vote, it gets dismissed as helpful. Your flag history doesn't show anything at all - you haven't cast a flag. Close flags can also be marked helpful/declined by moderators, if they act on them before the community does.

The fact that there's a helpful or declined resolution doesn't imply that a ♦ moderator handled it. Another example would be VLQ flags that get dismissed as helpful if the post is deleted, even if the deletion is carried out mere mortals and not ♦ overlords.