All other things apart, it seems that some of the issue is psychological, rather than functional.
Let's consider that "flagging" has a globally negative connotation pretty much web-wide-- it's typically a term describing describing something "abusive" in some way; keyword spam, plagiarism, spun content, abusiveness, duplication, copy/paste, clickbait and more.
Let's, for a moment, create a hypothetical in which flagging is a separate function from upvote/downvote. That takes away the hurt feelings over "I got flagged!"
Voting, then, becomes a process of somewhat qualitative and subjective content evaluation, kind of like going on Yelp and giving feedback on a restaurant you went to. Is the content worth something to me, or to the community, or both (hopefully)? I see lots of good content that I have no interest in, or don't agree with... but I can still recognize it as "having value."
Similarly, when I come across a post that simply reads "I wrote this post to make some money, please upvote, comment and follow me" I can probably make a determination that my time was just wasted, and I can downvote it.
Let's get back to the Yelp example... Let's say you actually like Billy Bob's Burgers, but don't think Billy Bob deserves their 5-star consensus rating, so you give it one star, even though you like the burgers... that doesn't really make sense, since you evidently think Billy Bob actually makes 3.5 star burgers. The under-evaluation slides from simply "evaluating" over into the territory a personal statement about wanting things your way. Nothing to do with hamburgers.
The irony there, in this community that prides itself on NOT having the censorship issues of Facebook and Google, is that such kinds of downvoting flirts with the borders of being a different kind of censorship.
Rules. Otherwise, people don't think like that. It's just, "I don't think it deserves that reward other people allocated, so I'm removing rewards". It nullifies the reward attribution other's want to give something, all because one power players says so. The reward removal can be done much better indeed, which is what I wanted at first. But now I see the whole flagging as an issue that should be reserved for active community members that prove themselves, and not based on the power of who has the most SP. N more concentration of power to decide who gets what, but the empowered community. It is a different kind of censorship indeed.
There's also a level of narrow-mindedness there; of not really thinking and understanding the nuances and implications of an action.
It's like going on Amazon and wondering why a blender I'm considering has a 1-star review. Clicking on the review and reading "UPS took 3 weeks to get this to me! Terrible service! Two thumbs down!"
I can appreciate the frustration, but that doesn't have JACK to do with whether it's a good blender or not. And now I feel slightly P.O.'d because you just WASTED my time by having a fit that has nothing to do with anything. And I still need a blender...
Yeah... I've seen that too lol.
In here it's "content? who cares"
"your post is too long"
"you dont have enough views yet"
"this person voted on it and I dont like them"
"i dont like you"
"i dont like this post topic"
Whatever to not actually evaluate the content for content, but find some extraneous reason to shit on it... lol.
I've liked your understanding of things since your first comments on my posts or your first posts, I forget how we first interacted (but I think it was a comment on my post where you demonstrated an understanding of the importance of content to drive a site). Can you contact me at admin@steemkure.com for further communication outside of strictly posts/comments? Thanks!
Email on its way...
but sjw's :D