I think you both make good points here. I wouldn't ever suggest rewarding "effort" or "hours" put in on any job if it was unproductive. But I can also agree that there are productive users who get rewarded essentially nothing. That's why I proposed the "hindsight average rewards" for early voters on the posts of users who go on to become succefull in a later stage.

I also want to say that while I respect krnel and a lot of his work, I also disagree on how much he should get rewarded because I think the information he puts out is often faulty or at least not of the same value to Steem as such as many other posts. @ozchartart I've defended to some extent because of how his content has been argued against, but I also don't think it ought to be valued very highly.

I still think that the flag icon should be removed ASAP and downvotes should be reformed in order to curb some of the soft "censorship" imposed by a single or a few large whiles, usually just because of a disagreement on rewards. These issues should not have to be discussed as a single topic called "flagging", but there should ultimately be either only a downvote button, or both a downvote and a flag available for different purposes.