Question: I am fairly new to this forum but I am repeatably running into the same problem. This is the user who has found a formula or data on the internet which they think can be applied to a problem. They go ahead and post or quote this blindly without giving any thought to its applicability and then insist they are correct because they can refer to some web page. Can we do anything in the guidelines reputation or flagging system to discourage this behavior?

The voting system on answers seems to address the problem there. But it does not apply to comments, Perhaps there should be a flag category a little stronger than not helpful say "just plain wrong". If upheld it could lead to a loss of a little reputation which might just make people think before posting spurious information.

So far I have succeeded in remaining polite but the temptation to call some people idiots is becoming overwhelming.

Answer: 
[Help center](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/flag-posts) says, for the flagging privilege (obtained at 15 rep):

> 
> **When should I flag?**
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> 
> If anything happens on our site that makes you feel uncomfortable or that, in your opinion, clearly does not belong here, please flag it and bring it to our attention!
> 
> 
> 

You saw something that, in your opinion, clearly did not belong here, and you flagged. Fine.

What happens when you "flag to close" before having the close privilege is that the question goes to the close queue, and users with sufficient privileges will then cast their votes according to what they think (but the flag does not count as a vote).

Nothing wrong here.

On the other hand, most of the time, other users with sufficient rep will likely close the post by themselves anyway, and the result will be the same. But in that case, the fact you flagged does *not* induce any overhead on the higher-rep users, so it doesn't matter. There is an overhead only if you are the *only* one who thinks this post must be closed (but you don't flag wrongly, do you?).
In addition to the other answers, moderators can take some flak when community moderation isn't allowed to take it's course before they zoom in and close something. It takes 5 users to close a question, but just one moderator. They tend to reserve that action for cases that might fall between the cracks, or for cases where there is a reason to get something closed FAST (like site sabotage, profanity,...)

The places where flags are most useful are for things that won't work their way onto the close cue, like questions posted as answers to similar questions, answers that are really comments, etc.