I'm not saying we can't improve the situation. I just don't think the suggested solution would not be open to abuse in itself.
As we have often seen in online communities (and life in general) popularity and fame can trump logic or doing the right thing.
For example:
Lets imagine a system where any user can file a complaint about another user’s behavior by submitting a post in the proper category. This post will be voted upon using the same process of all other posts. After 24 hours the post will have either a positive or negative payout. If the complaint has a positive payout, the filer is rewarded with the payout and the offending user’s Steem Power is negated by 10x the payout received by the filer. SP cannot go below the account creation fee.
Let's say I am famous figure and I don't like someone. What is to stop me from filling a complaint post (which incidentally my own vote could give a head start to if I am whale) and then getting my followers to upvote it. You could destroy any criticism/rivals or enemies this way.
Add in things like curation trails and it could get out of hand very fast. Perhaps I am missing some important thing here (entirely possible) - if so please let me know.
That's exactly what I was alluding to, smaller users would be shut down by a fraudulent claim, lose their SP, and the only recourse is to hope that some whale or group of users bigger than the bully notice and take action to stop it. The bad actor or actors would also be able to create multitudes of complaint posts.
This system also assumes the bad actor isn't just trying to bring the whole system down.
Yeah, that could happen but others would cry foul and even bigger whales will shut it down.