As to muting. I haven't actually muted anyone. At the moment I'm not sure I'd ever need to. It'd likely be only if it was someone seriously trolling me. That hasn't been a problem here yet. Though as it grows in popularity it likely will happen at some point. At that point I'd test out the mute. That is a preference thing. I don't necessarily think it should count towards anything.

If you talk about Cars and I am not interested an mute you. Should it impact your reputation because I have no interest in cars?

If you don't like something, don't vote for it. Pretty simple. Then the value and votes will only be those of people that were interested.

People like a lot of different things. Should I go around flagging everything I am not interested in? That'd end up being a lot of flagging.

Yet other people ARE interested in those things. Should I be able to cancel their interest simply because it is not something I like? I can just as easily ignore the things I don't like. That is what I typically do in life. I don't try to make others to conform to the things I like.

The problem is. The flag does not appear to be intended as a down vote. It does sound like it started out that way, and then more than a month ago they had discussions about this and decided it would be better for flagging posts that are detrimental to the site in some way. Not opinion, or bias based. The fact it is NO WHERE near the up vote button, and it is not a down vote arrow like you would expect, and that it is so far removed (enough so I didn't know it existed for 4 days) and shaped like a FLAG should be a clear indicator of what the intention was. Many people bring up other sites (not you) as examples of down voting. On those sites none of the UIs have a down vote shaped like a flag. Many of them do have an icon shaped like a flag to report an abusive post. So the fact it is done elsewhere, if people can go to that then they should also be familiar with what that iconography represents.

As to Attack. An attack does not have to be physical. If a person perceives an aggressive action taken against them such that it inspires fight or flight type reactions it is likely an attack. There are already cases of people using retaliatory flagging. This is not a good thing. If you suddenly fear that posting something people disagree with is going to slam your reputation and your potential earnings you are reacting to a feeling that an environment might be aggressive towards your view. Why does it have to be? If you agree with something, like it, or WHATEVER reasons you choose to up vote something that is your choice.

In reality if you look at this site. There is no down vote. It is called that because, initially there was a down vote and they decided to move it, and change it to a flag. The iconography, logic of placement, etc all support this. Plus, hearsay I was given by someone who was involved in earlier debates. He has 100,000 + steem power so I don't know that it qualifies him as a whale. He did write the following:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@onceuponatime/flagging-etiquette-and-practice

COMMENT FOR OTHER READERS: @kidsysco and I are actually friends outside of steemit. I told him about steemit. What you are witnessing here is two friends having a civil debate. We respect each other and we talk about all kinds of things. Generally we do it on a slack server, but now we are tackling this one here.