That I was agreeing on. The FAQ is clear that downvoting can be for whatever, but the labeling of "Downvote" as "Flag" is highly misleading and sets all the wrong kinds of expectations not least that there is some real centralized abuse moderation system (I'm not saying we want that, just that people, especially noobs who haven't studied the FAQ thoroughly are misled that way). It's almost as if the Steemit UI designers wanted to highly discourage downvoting, isn't it?
To reiterate my point of contention - to downvote because you don't like how something was upvoted on is logically consistent within the system of "vote however you want" but is effectively a vote against the system itself. It is saying the personal thinks system of vote however you want is broken and that this person is going to have to police every single post that breaks their personal beliefs about what is a good upvote or not. What a waste!
As you point out consensus will win the day and the author is still getting some rewards. Perhaps eventually transisto will get bored of downvoting those posts. Or perhaps that user will power-down and leave the platform which I believe transisto and others will deem a win for the platform (I think that is what is happening).
Assuming no one wants to codify "rewards should be relative to page views" which transisto uses as his justification for downvote, then IMO the real problem here is that we have one or a few whales treating "Flag" as a traditional downvote in the Reddit sense and most minnows and many others who are not. If the one big downvote had been replaced by a dozen or downvotes by small fish then the OP might not have felt so picked on. They might not have felt like this was one capricious user throwing around their whale weight and more a vote of no confidence by the hive mind of Steemit.
I personally think the reward system is broken, but I don't see that working around it by having one or few whales arbitrarily downvoting particular users all the time to be a great way to do it. That's not really consensus, it's just authoritarianism brute force.
Short of a systematic fix I believe a better way is to find and reward good content and use nudges to change the behavior of those that upvote content deemed not in the best interests of Steemit. If you really are going to systematically downvote someone's posts then maybe a better way is to use a bot that does it in an egalitarian way, cites all the metrics and votes for the post you have a problem with. That will a) make it a lot less personal, b) make it fairer, c) cause less fighting.
That's the reason why at work my company uses a completely automated system to enforce software coding conventions. We form a consensus on the rules, and don't fight over individual infractions. Newcomers who don't like the rules may bitch and moan for a bit but they have to obey the same rules as everyone else. They have a channel to lobby for changes and have a say in future changes to the rules - by consensus. I've not yet seen anyone stop work or leave because they don't like the coding standard are enforced. What we never do is have some particular person(s) appointing themselves to be "cop" and enforcing the rules. I've seen how that causes no end of strife with personal disputes, plus inconsistent and uneven enforcement, just as we see here which only serves to make things even worse.
Insightful..
What are your thoughts on @steemcleaners?
From my own experience it mostly works but needs to be smarter. They need an automated way to prove ownership of content or an account on a third party site to stop its nagging and eventual flagging. I've seen cases where people were as desperate as Michelle to stop being bugged and had concrete evidence that they were who they said they are. Something clearly wrong there.
I think all bots should have owners with proof of brain that can be challenged. I think all bots should issue warnings before taking punitive action. I think all bots should have something at stake so they can be reigned in.
I don't know how you enforce these things but those are my thoughts. How about you? Are you a cleaner fan?
Me? the only time i approach Steemcleaner is out of frustration, you know.. those days when you see the same damn account shitposting for the straight 50th times. So it does have it's uses.
But yeah i understand your point of view, its a bot after all, not an AI. so sometimes it follows the set of rules so closely that all subjectivity is lost and innocent people do get in the crossfire.
It's something that just needs ironing out i guess.
My opinion is that if everyone has the awareness to properly use the downvote button under the correct circumstances, Steemit would have been a way better place.
There's just seems to have this air of stigma towards the red flag. Which i dont think is fair. There is nothing wrong with expressing disagreement of rewards or better yet, calling out reprehensible acts. Do note that when i say "disagreement of rewards" its entirely subjective to what the voter thinks as worthy, same as upvotes.
I do think the downvote bots we see now are not the "final" version and they do serve a greater purpose towards encouraging people to better police spam and unethical gaming of the rewards pool. Ideally in future we don't need it at all.