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If users without enough reputation points to edit a question see a question that needs to be edited should they flag the question for a moderator to edit?

In this question which originally contained a very unclear title @hakre made a comment to the user asking him to edit it. @MikeSchinkel suggested that @hakre should go ahead and edit it for him but @hakre doesn't have enough reputation points to make an edit.

This question is meant to establish a way for all users of the site to help with moderation even if they don't currently have enough reputation points to make changes to a question.

According to the FAQ:

What if I see bad things happening?

Please use our flagging system to let us know about it. Each comment has a small flag icon, and every post has a flag menu at the bottom. Take advantage of it! We actively moderate our community, but we need your help to do so. Anything that is getting consistently flagged by our community members will be investigated and followed up on. And of course you can always email us directly if you feel the matter is extremely urgent.

Should flagging be reserved for spam or completely off topic questions or can it also be used for questions that are good but need to be edited for clarity?

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Speaking as a (new, pro tem) moderator, yes.

As the volume of questions on the site increases, the likelihood that ever one will be read by a moderator decreases. I'm happy to edit questions for clarity if I feel like I can do so in a helpful matter, and flagging would alert me to a question that needs to be edited. However, that will take place as time allows, and will always come after 'worse' stuff like off-topic questions, spam, etc.

Perhaps it would be good to only flag a question for editing if you've commented asking the OP to edit and they haven't responded after some reasonable period of time...?

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  • +1 and ditto to that.
    – EAMann Mod
    Commented Sep 5, 2010 at 4:21
  • I assumed that was how you guys wanted to handle this. I also just noticed that I can edit questions even though the reputation faq says you need 1000 points to edit.
    – Chris_O
    Commented Sep 6, 2010 at 3:33
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With the new edit suggestion system for low-rep users the need to flag a moderator has disappeared.

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Agreed. While it might become problematic if we get too many in a day we don't have that problem right now. We can revisit if it becomes a problem.

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