The flagging tool is only meant as a way to indicate spam or abuse, not to negate upvotes.
we both know from our recent encounters that this is not how it goes . people flock like cattle into specific domains and flagging often looks way too tempting.
Flagging looks tempting because people have no other way to express their valid opinion. And an opinion that a given post has earned too much in comparison to other posts, is a valid opinion that needs to be taken into account and not suppressed.
It's not about jealousy or crab mentality or anything like that. It's about a thoughtful distribution of our limited funds.
That's why we need two distinct tools:
As long as we don't have those two separated, there'll be confusion, trolling and hurt feelings. Actually, I'm quite surprised that we don't have it already in place and that this simple concept requires so much deliberation.
After reading the details of @dantheman's proposal, I don't think his solution is adequate. If I understand it correctly, what he proposes is that somebody's voting power can be negated completely, not just regarding a given vote, and the negation will last for 7 days. Maybe this is useful to counteract trolls and malicious whales, but this does not address the issue I stated above. We need a way to counteract a single vote on a particular post/comment, and not to wipe out somebody's voting power completely.