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This initial version of this question (Team members ignore their work and are not being held responsible. How can I restore order?) received a lot of comments stating that it read like a rant, and asking for it to be edited. The question has since been edited and reopened. As a result, several comments are now obsolete.

What is the best approach to deal with reporting these obsolete comments?

  1. Flag every obsolete comment.
  2. Flag one comment as "Other" and write a note to the moderators to clean up all obsolete comments.
  3. Flag one comment, and then @mention a moderator in another comment asking for the other obsolete comments to be removed. (This only works if a moderator has commented already on the post, which holds in this case.)
  4. Take it to chat.

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The best approach is to flag the post and explain what's going on. Obsolete flags can be harder to evaluate (there's no way to tell us why you think it's obsolete), so a custom flag is better in a case like that. You can leave a custom flag on the first or last relevant comment and that works ok too, but we can't respond to flags on comments -- so if we want to communicate with you about it, it's harder.

Pinging an individual moderator in a comment is less efficient because instead of a flag that any moderator might see, you have to wait for that specific moderator to see the ping. If you're going to flag anyway, there's no need to also leave a mod-targeted comment.

So a custom flag is the best choice to communicate the issue, and a flag on the post is a little more flexible than a flag on one of the comments. If you think the reason for obsolescence is obvious and there are only a few comments, we'll probably figure it out if you flag them as obsolete.

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  • "You can leave a custom flag on the first or last relevant comment" Hmm, I tend to assume that is someone went ahead and flagged multiple comments obsolete he got all of them and I won't always check the post to see if that broke anything. I'd probably suggest flagging them all or flagging the post. The latter is typically faster for everyone involved if multiple comments are involved.
    – Lilienthal Mod
    Commented May 9, 2017 at 9:14
  • @Lilienthal I've seen people flag obsolete comment threads that they participated in without deleting their own comments. (You can't flag your own.) So I find it a good idea to look at the context, though I'll sometimes handle a rude flag right away on the theory that there might be other problems but that one definitely has to go now.
    – Monica Cellio Mod
    Commented May 9, 2017 at 13:01
  • Ah, true. I suppose I'll have to make it a point to remember to check the post itself in future.
    – Lilienthal Mod
    Commented May 9, 2017 at 13:39
  • I always add "I only flagged this one comment" or something to that effect If I flag multiple comments with just one comment flag, as the mod UI only shows the comments that are flagged by default, and it's easy to miss that there are more comments!
    – Martin Tournoij
    Commented May 13, 2017 at 4:52

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