What's the difference between down-votes and flags?

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For questions:

Flag questions that are against the rules, or otherwise need attention from staff (e.g. due to a bad title or poor grammar).
Down-vote questions that you think are badly written, lack important details, aren't reasonable to answer, won't be useful to other people, etc.
Also down-vote lazy questions e.g. "How many Pokemon are there?"

For answers:

Flag it if the answer is inappropriate in some way or breaks the rules (e.g. it's not an actual answer and should be a comment).
Also flag if you think it should be edited for better phrasing or presentation.
Vote down if the answer is incorrect, gives bad advice, misses the point of the question, doesn't give enough detail, etc.
Incorrect answers do not break the rules. If the answer is fine apart from being incorrect, don't flag it.

For comments:

Flag if they are rude or insulting for no reason. For example if an answer is bad you might downvote it and post a polite comment saying that it's wrong. But saying "you're dumb" or stuff like that is not welcome here and should be flagged.
Comments should be on-topic, relating to the question or answer. They should be relevant in some way for people reading the question in future. A random comment like "hey what's your favourite Pokemon" should be taken to the chat.

answered Oct 6, 2011 by Pokemaster
edited Nov 29, 2021 by Fizz