Re "Make the "flag" button more powerful" - meta-discussion is for the most part off-topic; rightly so, it usually only generates noise. Yet I wonder whether do

Re "Make the "flag" button more powerful" - meta-discussion is for the most part off-topic; rightly so, it usually only generates noise. Yet I wonder whether downvoting or flagging is all that useful as feedback for (relatively) new users. I don't want to add to the meta noise by replying publicly, but they won't see the fact that I've flagged it. Worse, I've recently seen quite a lot of irrelevant, ill-informed, no-content, off-topic or otherwise useless comments upvoted a few times. Downvoting a noise comment from 5 to 4 isn't going to cause the author of the comment to think about posting something similar again. I wonder if attaching some kind of reason to a downvote would be useful, or even being able to reply privately (visible to the original author, admins/mods and maybe other downvoters?). Of course, it's possible that it's my judgment that's off, but I get the feeling I'm not the only one. Oh, and: I've had an account here for ~3 years and lurked for longer, and I'm still not sure I'm using the "flag" feature correctly. I also don't know what happens when I press it, exactly. This sort of thing really ought to be more obvious.