I agree that orchestrating the reviewers will be near-to-impossible, and that changing the whole system is likely to be very slow, which is why I'm focussing on the original action.

If memory serves, it was me that made the request (though certainly not the downvote). I would have answered this myself, save that I have little to add to EEAA's excellent answer. I would also direct you to my answer on the question Michael's linked to, above, for a more in-depth analysis.

Work out how to get them to read it before posting, and that will be a highly desirable improvement.

How far backwards are we supposed to bend over to accomodate people who can't be bothered to do any research before posting, or even read the page they've just confirmed they read?

@AndrewB as they say in security: be careful what behaviour you incentivise, for you will most likely get it.

As far as we're concerned, they are the same thing - off-topic, duplicates, wrong site, unclear, overbroad, web-control-panel related, all these are standard reasons for closure, and a question that accumulates enough such votes is put on hold / migrated / closed as duplicate accordingly. If you want to consider them differently, then adjust my previous comment so that it reads "don't flag for migration unless it's egregiously off-topic (say, a question about video game cheat codes, or best methods for dealing with land drainage)".

The way to prevent another flag in the future is not to flag! I think the advice you've been given is simple: don't flag a question for closure unless it's egregiously off-topic (say, a question about video game cheat codes, or best methods for dealing with land drainage). Questions which are in more of a grey area will get dealt with by the regulars with VTC privileges. If you focus on writing more great answers, your rep will zoom to 3k very quickly, and then you will need to start worrying about this stuff - but by then, you should also have developed a feel for it.

@Colyn1337 the document you link to talks about when to VTC. It only mentions flagging as an alternative while linking to a post from SuperUser. SF is known to do things differently from many other SE sites, by virtue of our professional focus. You have two moderators here telling you that you shouldn't be using flagging as a kind of low-rep VTC. You don't have to listen to me - I'm just another user, albeit with a fairly high rep - but I really, strongly suggest that you listen to them.

@Colyn1337 exactly so. One of the pre-supplied reasons for voting to close is "off-topic, because it belongs on another site", with meta.SF, SO, SU, dba.SE and unix.SE being offered as alternatives. If one of those attracts more of the five needed close votes than any other reason, the question is migrated. Write some more great answers for us to upvote and you can find this all out soon enough.

No. You're getting the detail, but missing the main point: this question wasn't appropriate for flagging at all, because it's not egregiously bad. It's arguably a candidate for vote-to-close-by-migration or vote-to-close-as-off-topic, depending on the presence of the existing answer, but if you don't have the rep to VTC, don't try to participate in the process via moderator flags. Sven's comment above makes this point much more pithily.

That one of the options available under Vote-To-Close, so I might well have done that. In this case, someone's already pointed out that it's been answered on SO, so they'd only have to close it as a duplicate after migration; I think it's rude for one admin action to give another set of admins work to do, so in this particular case I'd probably just VTC as off-topic. Your suggestion's a good one in other circumstances, though.

Yes, I know that, which is why I mentioned increasing your rep first. This isn't entirely elitism; it's also often true that by the time people have worked up to 3k rep, they've got a clearer idea of what does and doesn't fit on SF, and the methods for handling those cases. I don't want to sound like a dick, but I can't find a gentler way of saying this, for which I apologise, so: moderators are not a Vote-To-Close substitute for users without 3k rep.