I'm glad this post managed to find you.

You are "receiving pennies, repeatedly" because too much of the rewards are going to posts repeatedly and consistently overrewarded and upvoted by whales including both @ozchartart and @krnel. (FWIW, until recently I do not believe I have voted for either.)

I'm not complaining about my pennies, just making a point that there are tons out there who are receiving next to nothing on most posts, so when they finally have a successful one that then gets flagged, it can be quite a blow.

Also, I haven't a problem with good content being rewarded, even if it is at my own expense. I don't attribute my low payouts to the success of others, but rather to an undervalued price in STEEM that limits the amount of people that can currently achieve success. The undervalued price of STEEM, I attribute to the less than desirable atmosphere which is repelling new users. If we can work on that, then we may see more people adopting the platform, and a rise in the value of STEEM. With a larger pot size, we can all--that are deserving of it--get paid for our work.

On that note, I respectfully ask that if you are ever considering downvoting a post that you feel is overvalued so that I might get the opportunity to receive a payout, please do not. I think downvotes should be reserved for plagiarism, spam, and hate speech. Opinion based flagging is ruining this environment.

I think you have influence and you should have a right to utilise it, but if you try to be more positive in your use of it, by rewarding good content rather than punishing content you don't approve of, we will see the fear in this community subside and the bad vibes felt towards whales negated.

Respectfully I disagree on this point. I evaluate the value that the content brings or demonstrates. "Effort" alone (whether it is digging holes and filling them up or writing long posts that won't attract a large user base to read or compete with) is not evidence of value, only cost.

You appear to have misinterpreted me. I was not stating that all effort should be rewarded. I meant that, someone who you downvote, may have posted ten great posts that were very valuable to the site in the past week, but because of the small reward pool and large competition, received no reward. The payout on the post you are thinking of downvoting, could be deserved for previous posts that were valuable but underpaid.

Think of it this way.. If someone has been working hard on here, putting in a lot of effort to no avail, they reach a point where they're thinking, "I'm only going to have one or two more goes at this, and if I don't make something, then I'm out of here." This is an understandable position, if someone is putting in the time, as if it were a job, and not being rewarded, then obviously they're going to think about leaving.

Then on that last post when they're feeling disheartened, they finally get some results. This restores their faith in Steemit and they plan to make more and more content to get that feeling again. However, a whale comes a long, and despite that person posting content in the previous week that the whale may have upvoted had they seen it, this whale decides that this particular post is undeserving, and so they flag it.

That enthusiasm takes a blow and the user leaves the site. This is not a far fetched, nor a non-existent instance on this site. I myself was feeling disheartened before @curie showed up to give me a much needed kick up the arse. The point I was attempting to portray is that when considering a downvote we should, at least while the pot is limited, not look at the value of an author on a post by post basis, but on their value to the community as a whole and whether they will serve to produce content that will in future be of value to new comers.

Am I making any sense to you at all?