Well, you have a 60+ reputation an almost 4k SP... I think you should think about doing some flagging yourself... leave them a comment why you did so and give them a chance to appeal.
But you do have some power with your stake and reputation, with power comes responsibility ;)
Good point. I've really been hesitant to flag. I don;t really understand the ramifications it has for the user.
Perhaps it's time for me to do my part though.
a flag is "just" a negative vote.
on the blockchain, all it does is removing reward shares from a post.
on the site steemit.com, it additionally affects the reputation score (that's NOT on the blockchain). Reputation will only be affected if the flagger's reputation is higher than that of the flagged account.
This does make it a bit pointless, for a small account to flag, but once you have some voting power and rep, you can use that.
It is important to flag plagiarism, for example, because that will prevent plagiarized posts of taking money out of the reward pool.
Other steemians will see the flag, and may think twice before giving a vote on something that doesn't deserve one.
Of course there is a huge debate about the ethical implications of flagging, but I'd say it is part of the game, and it is a feature for a reason!
Hey thanks for the in-depth explanation. I'll start taking action a bit more when necessary.
Keep up the good detective work. I really enjoyed reading your summary. It felt like a story somehow haha kinda entertaining the way you laid it all out methodically.
My pleasure. There will be more stories, you can count on that!