I don't think shutting down the conversation should be allowed. I however think that flagging has a certain way of obtaining the opposite result in reality. It draws attention often times because people want to know why it was flagged.
I think something drastic needs to change. A user agreement or constitution that will bind us into not being horrible humans. Or paying consequences for it. Some type of balance between the voting power of the top 100 accounts and the rest of us.
I think downvoting needs to be there in extreme cases still, and it sucks that your post would be downvoted because of a disagreement of social views. That isn't what downvoting is for.
I also question the official narrative on vaccinations myself. I encourage open discussions in all things.. and downvoting without first attempting an open discussion is not fair or balanced, to me at least.
I can understand the desire to have the community police itself - it solves numerous problems, from not needing a support team to manage the huge task, through to absolving the corporation of having to deal with the grief of it all. My initial suggestion, in the spirit of the project, was to expand steemit to have an area where all flagged posts are visible to whoever wants to look - ensuring that the community can gain visibility of flagging activity, rather than having smaller users with no voice get crushed with no repercussions. I will be creating this at steemocean.com in the near future as a starting point.
Perfect idea, like at the top right next to trending, a flagged category! Kill the dithering, and post hiding. Adding a flagged icon in the feed on the post when something gets flagged, and put it in the flagged category. People could go to that section and manually curate.
Yes, though I don't expect that the post hiding will end, it will at least give us a way of monitoring what is going on.
Just like a positive marker (clicker) isolates a moment in time, making it memorable for the cookie that comes after it, a negative marker (NO!) makes a moment memorable.
Jumping on a behavior with a negative marker,"NO!" and hammering it makes it EXTREMELY memorable. That is the point of the timely punishment methodology; that it be remembered.
Skillful handlers use a bad enough punishment to ensure that it never happens again. Having that punishment be overwhelming is a key element of wielding punishment as a behavioral modification tool. In addition to the overwhelming nature of the punisher, you have to have some kind of recovery behavior; something that is correct and good, so you can give your cookies to reinforce good behavior.
If you don't have both of those attributes, all you are doing is habituating the critter to low level abuse and brutalization; don't sweat it though, that's life... it's unfair.
This whole discussion about Whales punishing people for the good of the currency or community is asinine. A bunch of people who have no clue how the mechanics of behavior mod work arguing endlessly about how their wielding of power is really about shaping the behavior of the platform. Ego and defense of money making method; that's what it seems like to me.
The people actively involved in these flagging wars, especially the more powerful users, have lost focus and perspective. And that's what happens when you wield punishment poorly; you lose focus and perspective. Pretty soon you're no longer doing any cool shit because you're too busy punishing your dog.
Downvotes should exist, but you should give explanation why you disagree. There we come to slippery territory. 'Science is settled about vaccines'...Sentence like this to someone can be argument, to others not. To me this sentence is not argument what so ever.