Doesn't that seem a little power crazy to you that so many users can be essentially crippled permanently over a disagreement? Like, from what I can tell from this post, the OP seems polite but skeptical, willing to accept evidence contrary to what they think. The user has even resteemed a sweetsssj post not too long ago.
It's perfectly fine for whales to simply ignore the answers... It's not abusive to keep pushing to find an answer one is looking for.
Perhaps an op's post is pointless or dumb or wrong, but I've rarely seen one which is threatening or abusive.
I feel if somebody is trolling unnecessarily, they should be punished in some way but A) We need criteria laid out as what is considered unacceptable behaviour and B) pretty much permanently crippling an account that otherwise seems to be an honest account isn't the answer.
The arbitrary nature of downvoting on this website is one of the worrisome things I think should be addressed. I mean, I'm worried that If this post annoys you, I can say goodbye to the dozens of hours of hard work I've put into this site, and I'm literally out of a job as of a couple of weeks ago so that could be devastating.
Edit - Also 'So today I was cyberbullied on Steemit and continuously received harassing messages from a member that included assault and threats.
The member also threatened to gang up on me and have his Steemit friends flag my blog post and replies so he could lower my reputation score. My reputation score is now down to 4.'
Is this really acceptable simply because the balance of power leans that way?
I agree that discussion should be out there. That's why I did not flag this user's main post, even though it was baselessly defamatory, using stolen images to make money from casting doubt on a longtime Steemit author. I only flagged his/her trolling comments, which were persistently vicious, even after the troll's target had set the record straight with her responses. We need diversity of opinion, but we do not need trolls.
I can imagine this person being obsessively irritating but yeah, maybe it's something to consider in one of the later updates, along with more mods in general one day!
More than irritating, that person's comments suggest some real prejudice and are strongly defamatory. If someone comes in brand new and tries to make a name for himself by tearing down others who have proven themselves and who he knows nothing about, questioning whether this member speaks English and uses cheap labor to help with her posts, then that behavior doesn't belong here. @sweetsssj is one of the hardest working people on Steemit and I have had numerous conversations with her in English over a period of many months. Believe me, I don't use that downvote power lightly and only do so very, very infrequently when there is a clear cut case. Beyond that, I fully agree with you we need to continue discussing how best to handle trolls without anyone misusing their power.
Fortunately, there are checks and balances even now: I am being watched and anyone who disagrees with my actions has time to review the facts and show me if I have voted mistakenly. If so, my votes can be removed or countered by others in the community for several days still. In this case, I don't see that happening because the troll's comments were way beyond my understanding of the standards that this community has shown to uphold to prevent the type of harassment they displayed.
I didn't have any clue about the reviewing board, that's certainly something worthwhile, cool.
And yeah I did a ctrl+F on her post and searched this users name and there were perhaps hundreds of results... pretty wild =/
Thanks for taking the time to respond!
The whole ability of someone to organize a group of other people on Steemit to lower your reputation score is one thing that's going to prove a major hindrance to having people continuously create valuable content on this site. From the brief time I've been here, I've noticed that quantity seems to greatly overshadow quality when it comes to blogs, as a blog replete with misspellings detailing today's walk to the mailbox easily gets ten times (and in many cases hundreds of times) the upvotes a detailed blog about the first submersible used in war would, for example. I find that very curious given that I was told Steem values quality content.
I'm not particularly concerned with earning money or "reputation" here, but it'd be nice if people actually read blogs instead of just upvoting anything posted by people who have the ability to like their comment and thus give them a $1 payout.
I think you've nailed the point about why the ability to down vote is so dangerous and in almost all cases I've heard of leads to bullying not helping quality. Flagging to request real review of content or to add meta data like NSFW (again with actual review) is useful. Flagging as a mechanism for trolling is not. So baseless flagging is IMO as bad as baseless trolling.