Is there a grace period for moderator action?

Question

This is mostly out of personal interest in how things are done. I did not find the answer in Who are the moderators, and what is their role here? which seemed like a likely location for the answer.

I found this topic, Should there be a grace period before downvoting questions from a new user?, but it concerned "downvoting" and not "flagging" questions.

I wanted to flag a question but thought it was very new. I wasn't sure whether to flag it anyway (I have done so in the past). Do moderators have a system for waiting a set period of time before acting on flags? or is it on a question by question basis depending on the perceived urgency of taking some action? Obviously if an OP continues to comment when they've been asked to edit a question, they aren't taking a hint so a case by case (question by question) basis makes sense. I was just curious and (so far) have not found the answer.

If this is in the documentation and I missed it then this is not a great question. If its not, I'm recommending adding something about the policy (assuming it exists) or "rule of thumb" that moderators use in making that evaluation and what my role (as a privileged user of the site) should be in flagging questions. Should I wait or flag the question now and allow the moderator(s) to wait?

I'm thinking primarily of questions that could be easily improved and not questions (or answers for that matter) that have obvious problems.

Answer 1

I think the best time to flag, comment, edit, vote, etc is when you first see an issue with a post because the longer a post goes with no feedback, the more likely the attention of the poster may no longer be there to act on that feedback.

Likewise for moderators responding to flags.

Users are free to apply grace periods in any way that they wish but there is no obligation to.

We value the volunteer time that every user spends here curating the posts of others and so we would not want them to have to see and potentially re-read a question repeatedly before taking an action that seems appropriate on the first read.

One thing on flagging is that I think that should be done sparingly. For example, if an answer does not attempt to answer a question, then it should be flagged as not an answer. However, I see many flags about an issue with the quality of an answer, and these I decline because they are better addressed using comments, edits and/or downvoting.

With respect to what to do:

if an OP continues to comment when they've been asked to edit a question

I think the best solution is to close vote when you have that privilege at 3,000, or to flag and ask us to consider doing so. It probably goes without saying that anyone continuing to answer such a question (closed to try and redirect the asker from commenting to editing) within the comments is free to do so, but that undermines the site benefit of having questions asked in questions not comments.