the flag was created for fair scoring of content and to report abuse.
This is the only thing I really disagree with. The flag doesn't report abuse to anybody. Nobody gets any kind of notification of a post being flagged as abusive. It really is just a down vote, though I agree that it should mostly be used only to correct abuse. I don't disagree with the reason smooth gave for his flag yesterday but it's just incredibly obvious that that reason was bogus. There was no need in that circumstance to correct the rewards on a post that had 200+ views. To claim that posts need to be more "interactive" when the most successful of these "interactive" posts he refers to has less than 30 views is just blatant evidence of a false rationalisation.
People need to ignore the flag explanations and start looking at behaviours if you want to figure out if a flag was for personal interests or community interests. When somebody contradicts themselves consistently it becomes more and more obvious their words mean nothing. Focus on behaviours and draw your conclusions from there. There is no need to give a reason for a flag. Really the only vote he countered was Dans. There's nothing wrong with that if it were true that the post isn't valuable to the community. But it was perfectly obvious by the views that it is valued by the community, not just Dan and so the reasons given were clearly false.
Anyway, rant over. I want to be more positive and cooperative but it's just not in my nature to pretend I'm blind, even if it would mean better rewards. Thanks for posting.
REsteemed
In the whitepaper, it suggests that flags were created for fair scoring, as a downvote, but the abuse of using said flags has become evident. There was never a clear explanation on how someone was going to use a flag, and there's no justification for when we do, because we each interpret it differently. I think that's why the people who consistently downvote posts seem contradictory. They themselves have no real justification for how the flag is supposed to be used.
I think people need to ignore flags altogether, unless the piece of content actually puts the platform in jeopardy. We can just easily negate rewards by retaining our own vote, just as you would by downvoting a piece of material.
Thanks for resteeming :D