Sorry you had to go through that. I really respect the approach that you took to handle it. I haven't dealt with the person you mentioned before directly myself, but I have heard a lot of other users complaining about the same user.
The solutions you are proposing are good ideas, but unfortunately I don't think they will end up being implemented. The reason is because for every 1 bad type of user like the one you reported, there are thousands of spammy and harrasive users looking to get their posts/comments seen.
The way the system is designed, new users that sign up and do spammy/harrasive things should get flagged and hidden as quickly as possible to minimize the harm they do to the users/community.
The real problem is that we have users like this (with a non-negative reputation) that are abusing the system and down-voting posts like yours for no legitimate reason. The 'longer term' solution to this is these types of people should get downvoted/flagged themselves, which will make their comments and votes hidden and worthless - thus negating the negative user.
Unfortunately though there is still some time where a user like this can do damage before the community notices and flags him. I think the best solution that we have for this right now, is hope that other users who this happens to are as mature as you, and handle it in such a way that lets the community respond and address the situation.
Thanks for the response and the support!
I'm still learning a lot about the underlying network and digesting the entirety of the whitepaper is taking longer than I anticipated. Is the system set up in a way that a user's influence is based more on their personal rating, or their Steem Power? For instance, can a new account come in, buy a significant amount of Steem Power and then immediately have enough influence to do this type of downvoting? Or does their personal rating outweigh their SP?
Thanks again for your response!
That's a great question. I'm not an expert, but I will give you my understanding - which should hopefully be pretty close.
When you upvote/downvote, there are two things it affects:
-The payout of the post
-The reputation of the poster
The payout of the post is entirely based off of your SP. If you buy more SP, you will be able to affect the payout more.
The reputation of the poster is entirely based off of your reputation (I think). To affect the person's reputation score, you need a higher reputation.
As far as when you down-vote to the point that it becomes marked as spam / hidden - basically it is when the payout amount is negative. This means that SP is what you want to be able to have this control. If for example you got a ton of flags from users with low SP, and one user with high SP upvoted your post, then your post would not be marked as spam. If 10 people voted it up though, and someone with high SP flagged you - then it could cause it to go negative and be hidden / marked as a spam post.
Hope this helps. I apologize if anything I am saying here is not accurate, but I am pretty sure it is right. I know the community is working on a FAQ/wiki project, so hopefully within the next few months we will have these types of questions answered.