I found this question where it seemed that the user was clearly just putting his homework on Stack Overflow.

However, lacking enough reputation, I could not request for the question to be closed so the next best thing was to flag it. Since it was not rude or really spam, the last option was to flag it for moderator intervention so it could be closed.

However, my flag was declined with the following reason:

declined - please use the standard close reasons and flags to close questions, rather than the 'requires moderator attention' flags

What should I do when encountering these types of questions when I don't have enough reputation to flag as "should be closed"?

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    Been there, Done that, Got a declined flag. ... Few days later, I found out that we needed 50 rep to flag using the standard close reasons. ... :( – Bhargav Rao Sep 8 '16 at 8:15
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    Flagging or closing the question as "too broad" is extremely silly. Lots of homework questions are arguably too broad because you'd have to write a book's worth of explanatory material to teach the student what she should have learned in class. That is obviously not the case here. It is an extremely simple question, and can be concisely and completely answered in 10-20 words. I get that you want to close it, and I get that there are not a lot of good close reasons, but...recommending "too broad" is just absurd. – Cody Gray Sep 8 '16 at 8:20
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    "too broad" flag also requires 50 reputation. Of course now it makes sense, but as a new user, we should be warned in that case that there are other flags to which we don't have access – Adalcar Sep 8 '16 at 8:20
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    @CodyGray: extremely silly: Ok, justification time. My view: The OP didn't explain why they couldn't choose the correct answer. They also ask for an explanation. So, my questions: Do they even know the ones' complement? Do I need to repeat Wikipedia here? The "too broad" flag description gives some good guidance: "[...] Please add details to narrow the answer set or to isolate an issue." (emphasis mine) – honk Sep 8 '16 at 8:41
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    Well, you are still abusing "too broad" as "lacks a minimal understanding", a close reason that was unceremoniously taken away from us. (Coincidentially, if I remember correctly, the argument for its removal was that we were abusing it.) – Cody Gray Sep 8 '16 at 8:52
  • @CodyGray: If I made a mistake here, then I will be happy retract my close vote. Can you go a bit further to convince me? I joined after the "lacks a minimal understanding" flag was taken away. My issue: I don't know if the OP lacks a minimal understanding, because they didn't give any information. Therefore I mapped "lacks information" to "too broad". Also, is a Q&A that answers a very specific question without focusing on the actual problem of the OP meaningful for SO? I know, the "too localized" flag was also taken away... – honk Sep 8 '16 at 9:15
  • @honk, I don't really mean to get myself into the position of defending the available closure reasons. I don't agree with the choices that were made. If you're interested in this sort of thing, there's tons of previous discussion about it on the global Meta. Also see here, and other questions linked to/from that. I completely understand your issue and your problems with the question. I'll go one step further: I understand apathy about the need to choice the correct close reason, because there really isn't one. In general, pick any of 'em... – Cody Gray Sep 8 '16 at 9:21
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    the point is to get the question closed. I'm just saying that in this particular case, I don't really think the question qualifies for "too broad". "Unclear" might be a better choice. Or just a downvote. I don't really buy the argument that there is information lacking from the question. Sure, you could assume he doesn't know what one's-complement is, but that's like saying you could assume someone who asks a C++ question doesn't know what a pointer is. You have to make certain minimal assumptions. The answer is not excessively broad and can be answered as several people have done. – Cody Gray Sep 8 '16 at 9:22
  • @CodyGray: I see. I fully agree with you. I retracted my close vote and just downvoted instead. Thanks also for the link. I just started reading, but I will further work through it. – honk Sep 8 '16 at 9:45
  • In my view, this question would be too broad if it also asks something like "what is ones complement", and further explanation may result in a broad answer and it is said "too broad", but now it seems doesn't, you should not assume the user would also ask something like "what is ones complement" and then say it is too broad – ggrr Sep 8 '16 at 9:57
  • @amuse: Yeah, I got it. As Cody already summarized: "You have to make certain minimal assumptions." – honk Sep 8 '16 at 10:07
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    @CodyGray: Thanks again for the link. I found the answer by Shog9 especially helpful. – honk Sep 8 '16 at 12:38
  • @CodyGray: Since 21 cannot be represented in four bits, there is definitely something missing in the question. It's probably a trick question (eg. 21 in trinary). As such, in my opinion, it is not a meaningful question to have on SO and it should be closed as unclear. – Nisse Engström Sep 8 '16 at 13:26

Update: As of October 2016, this has been changed, such that flagging a question as "should be closed" now requires only 15 reputation (not the 50 reputation explained below).

This is now a significantly lower bar, and I feel even more confident about the claim that you probably should hold off on judging what is/is not "low quality" until you've contributed at least one or two positively-scored posts of your own.

There is, unfortunately, not a good way for low-reputation users to indicate problematic questions. Although you can flag at only 15 reputation, flagging a question as "should be closed" actually requires 50 reputation because of the implementation detail that 50 reputation is required to post comments, and these flag choices implicitly leave a comment on your behalf.

So the natural instinct of a quality-minded, yet low-reputation, user is to raise a custom moderator flag. This is certainly not a bad instinct, but there is very little that a moderator can do in response to your flag. They cannot flag a question on your behalf; all they can do is single-handedly close the question, which is not necessarily appropriate. Moderators also operate under the guidance that they should not step in to do things that the community can do without their assistance. Closing a question can be done by five regular users with 3k+ reputation, requiring no moderator intervention, so this is the preferred route.

Compounding matters further, the moderator who processes your custom flag is not likely to notice or consider how your current reputation limits the privileges you have access to. They're just going to decline your flag using one of the canned decline reasons, which sends a decidedly unhelpful and potentially confusing message to you, since it recommends that you should instead be doing something that is impossible for you to do.

Someone brought a similar issue up on Meta yesterday (10k+ only link), albeit in an extremely unconstructive fashion, which kind of got me thinking about this situation. I started asking myself if there's really a good reason why flagging a question as in need of closure should really require 50 reputation, whereas you can flag something as spam, abusive, or very-low-quality with only 15 reputation. I'm not sure there is. As I mentioned above, it looks like an implementation detail leaking into the abstraction.

Perhaps the best argument for the status quo is that a user with less than 50 reputation is rather unlikely to be well-acquainted with how the site works and what is/is not on-topic, making their flags more noisy than helpful. That may not be true in all cases, but it is probably more often true than not.

Honestly, the basic assumption made throughout the system is that 50 reputation is a very low bar. You really need to get to the 50-point threshold in order to fully participate on Stack Overflow. Posting a few good answers will net you +10 reputation for each upvote, getting you to 50 reputation in short order. The best I can say is that we'd prefer your initial interactions on the site be posting questions and answers, rather than engaging in moderation duties.

While people with a good sense of quality will be bothered by the inability to act when duty calls, rest assured that we do have plenty of users raising flags already. What we really need are users with the ability to act on those flags. That requires, at a minimum, the privilege to downvote questions and answers, and even better, the privilege to cast close votes. We anxiously await your earning of moderation privileges, and sincerely appreciate your desire to help maintain the site's quality!

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    Maybe it would make sense to add a hint to the flag screen. – Jonas Schäfer Sep 8 '16 at 12:00
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    I started asking myself if there's really a good reason why flagging a question as in need of closure should really require 50 reputation; I agree. I have been meaning to write a FR to fix this for some time; some of the noise in our flag queue can be attributed to these 15 < x < 50 rep users, who cannot VtC questions; so they raise a mod-only flag and ask us to close it. I see no reason why the close-flag types cannot simply be allowed, then routed through to the CV queue. If you beat me to writing the FR, you already have my +1! – Matt Sep 8 '16 at 12:01
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    Nice answer Cody. You ought to write for a living. – Drew Sep 8 '16 at 13:04
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    @Matt - Wasn't this a limitation due to the fact that two of the close reasons (possible duplicate, custom off topic) require the ability to leave a comment, and 50-rep users can't? Think that's why the limitation was put in place originally, but I've always thought an exception could be made, like how a low-rep user can leave a comment when a short answer is converted into one by the system. – Brad Larson Sep 8 '16 at 14:28
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    @BradLarson users without close vote privilege can't use the custom close reason. AFAIK, only duplicates should be restricted. – Braiam Sep 10 '16 at 23:17

About a month after you posted this question, on October 12th, this has been implemented. You can now flag for closure at the same reputation level (15) as you can flag for moderator attention. To quote bluefeet ♦:

As of this morning, we've loosened some of the restrictions for users with flag privileges but not enough rep to comment. This change specifically targets users with rep >= 15 and < 50.

Users falling in this range of reputation will now be able to flag posts as "should be closed" on the flagging dialog; this includes duplicates. Previously, this was restricted because users did not have the ability to comment. We've have made it possible for users to create the auto-comment, if the flagging option creates one (i.e. duplicates), but since the user does not have the ability to comment they will not be able to edit the comment until they've gained that privilege.

This should alleviate some of the confusion for lower rep users flagging things for moderator attention, when they should use standard flag/close options.

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