A down vote is simply just a down vote, it is not an attack on you, it is not stealing from you. It is just an opinion and opinions matter here. I personally see no issue with the Flag. I will use it where I want and I do not think I abuse it. I tend to keep it for the really offensive stuff, or stuff that is just total BS, lies, or clearly trolling for responses. If it is CRAP, it gets the flag. Please don't over think that action. It's just a vote.
I might add that I MUTE people a great deal and far more easily than flagging. So let me ask you... Would you rather be muted or flagged? At least you have a chance to reach my feed again if you are flagged. Isn't that the whole idea behind a flag? A warning before muting.
This would be true IF it didn't ding your personal reputation, and it did not take the money from you other people have provided. One flag from a whale (high steem power) can send your reputation plummeting, and it could take all of the money that 100 other people thought you should have. That makes it an attack. When you have new people coming in and getting excited and they don't do anything wrong and are doing great and suddenly they are NOT doing great for no reason other than opinion, that is going to be a problem.
This has not happened to me. I've been watching it happen to others. Since it is in beta it is something we should dialog about and improve if possible. I've seen quite a lot of flagged posts that have nothing wrong with them. Also apparently this was discussed months ago before most of us were here and they actually intended that FLAG as a report this post type action. Thus, why it is a FLAG icon and not a down vote ARROW, and why it is nowhere near the rest of voting.
What do you think about my question involving the muting action and using flagging as a predecessor to muting? Wouldn't you want to see a few flags by someone before you were permanently banned from their feeds by means of muting? Isn't muting the real way to get penalized here and furthermore, if we are really discussing this... Should the number of Mutes count towards your reputation?
I have not seen any official guidance about how to use the flag so I figured any reason you deem acceptable is reason enough to use the flag. I have searched for it only to find rhetoric on feelings one way or the other...
I can still debate that this is not stealing or an attack on you by simply flagging your post. That money was never yours and just because someone thought you deserved that money, doesn't actually mean you did deserve it. In the end it is the combined consensus that matters and that is what decides on how much you actually get paid. We all accepted that upon agreeing to sign up and post here. That is very different than someone breaking into your account and stealing your coin. You did not sign up for that or agree to that in any way.
Calling it an attack doesn't feel right either. There was no physical harm to you in any way nor was any implied. It was just a vote, just an opinion. Everyone has one, don't they deserve to be able to express it?
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.
OK then... You are starting to convince me. But I would hate to cripple the curation system. I think people's opinion here matters and a flag is a way for readers to communicate their opinion to me. I think it could be a useful metric to gauge your audience. Perhaps more work here is needed, I might support a 1-10 voting system along with a flagging system that requires a valid reason. Good post Deva! U da man! You know that! lol
We hit the nesting limit...
I'd be fine with them putting a down vote arrow that shows negative votes and having that reduce visibility on the trending page. I'd leave the flag there are we need a way to get spam, plagiarism, and obviously abusive stuff to be not visible (unless you look at the block chain). There is a need for a reporting mechanism and I think the flag could work for that.
I simply believe it is a case where mixed messages are being sent.
So people on either side are justified in arguing because it is not a clear message. If it is intended to be a down vote then make it a down arrow and put it in the voting area. If it is intended to be a report bad posts, then change the text to reflect this.
I don't believe it would impact curation at all if there were no down vote at all. How many people like this? That should be a strong indicator. It shouldn't be about me voting down every Barbie Doll post because I have no interest in Barbies. Doing so silences the interest of other people. How many people up vote something is a clear indicator there is interest. SO WHAT if it is not your interest.
If it continues as it is I see it leading to wars... people noting who is down voting things, and retaliatory down voting their things and anything they post. People who down vote any topic they disagree with regardless of quality of content. It could get ugly pretty fast.
We are seeing a little bit of that already.