RE: All aboard, the @flagtrail

Hello again Marianne.

Firstly, thanks again for your reply here today, I appreciate it a lot and it tells me that you feel this to be an open forum where differing views can be discussed in a productive way.

To try to respond to the points you make, I'll copy your text and reply underneath. I don't really enjoy this too much as the comments can get quite short and come across a little rude, but here goes!

I am so sad that you are starting to go that way as well.

I've flagged plagiarism, comment-farming, and on posts I've disagreed with the pending awards with for a long time - this system is more of a convenient and methodical approach.

All that valuable voting power could be used to support people who actually produce good content on the blockchain

My flag total as a percentage of my total Voting Power for the week will be < 1%. When A flag is applied, the pending reward goes back to the pool in the hope that other votes have landed on good content which will then be earning that little bit more. The 'issue', as ats-david pointed out, is that this returned reward in the case of flagtrail, is being redistributed to the down-voter, myself for example, and it is being given on an automated comment. I understand this is not perfect, but the question I put forward is, would you rather the original account take the reward, or me?

I am so against this flagging business and find it very ego driven and hurtful to the community.

I hope you have learned enough about me over the past couple of years to see that my ego rarely drives what I do here, but I do concede that some flags are not always given for the 'right' reasons.

Hundreds of good content creators leave because they are not seeing their posts rewarded.

This is unfortunately the way the system is designed. There is a finite pool each day which you could considered to be 10 full votes (up or down). The rewards cannot and will not ever reach everyone.

The flagging community is growing the problem of lousy content by diverting their valuable possible up-votes for good content.

As above, it's really not the case and indeed the opposite. A flag replenishes the pool allowing extra rewards available for that good content. 305 different account have received a non-dust vote from my account this week, and 3 have been flagged.

And no matter how "experienced" the people are that decide who gets a downvote - it is still censorship.

Censorship is an incorrect word associated with flags. The content may be hidden from a particular window onto the blockchain but is still view-able with an extra click. Censorship would be removing the content altogether, which does actually take place when accounts upload the likes of child porn. This is not done with a flag, but at blockchain level I believe.

initiatives like that have made me consider more than once to give up on Steem.

I'm sorry to start your day negatively, but I honestly believe that flags (if placed correctly) are not a reason to give up on Steem. When you visit a blog with 300 comments that have been voted by the same account and their numerous alts, this is a bum start to the day. Having an account large enough to combat things like this is good for Steem, and good for good content, providing other curators reach it.

Flags make up much less than 1% of the daily voting, bought votes somewhere in the region of 20%, and climbing - I do not believe it is flags that are the reason good work isn't being manually curated.

Thanks again, I hope their is at least something to consider in the above.

Asher, I know that you are one of the good guys and that you mean well. And I don't think that you are ego driven. But I stand by my opinion that I dislike the idea that anybody has the right to say this is worthy content and this is not. I.e. in my opinion, all the drug war and steem monster posts are spam or irrelevant and not any better than posting a pretty picture from the internet with correct attribution.

I am all for fighting plagiarism. But what is valuable content to one is trash to another. I.e. I have been hated on for promoting Freewrites on Steem and people have been told that their posts are not good enough. But, so many people have found a voice through this exercise, found community, got curie upvotes, and even published books. Still, that person(s) might see flags for that kind of content appropriate.

Also, reading through the convo on this post is only wanting me to run even further from the flagging crowd. Calling someone a bitch, really? From what I am reading, it is a person who is a leader in this flag community. What happened to step away when getting angry. Or to let it go?
This convo makes me doubt that decisions are not biased. What about the guy who runs the contest and got flagged and is now ready to leave steem? Tons of people ask for upvotes and he gave an option to upvote or leave a comment. I thought that was clear. But he got argued into the ground on that one too. And he must have been flagged as well since his responses were hidden.
When I first joined, I read the White Papers and I am pretty sure it said no bots. There are tons of bots. So rules are enforced arbitrarily.
And, in the end, it is the ones with more money who get to push their will on the others.

That said, you do what you feel is right and I will stay as far away from the flag crowd as I possibly can.