If you can believe it, I found two more down-vote victims today. The delegate responded to one of them, justifying the act by stating that it was because the user posted tens of "spam" comments. There's no prohibition against "spamming" in the Terms of Service we all agree to. However, there is a Steemit authorized (assuming that, because it is listed in the official Steemit FAQ) named SteemCleaner. This is the delegate that flagged the first victim I mentioned.
Here's the issue @charlie777pt , if a post gets up-votes, using voters' Steem Power, what happens to their Steem Power once the post has been down-voted into a deficit? Is it returned to the voters? What happens to the contributor's reward?
Those questions apply to Steemit's SteemCleaner every bit as much as the self-designated flaggers. Are they stealing from voters and authors?
Well, this comment is out of the line of the post, and I would need a complete post to answer all these questions.
I don't use flags, but they were created for strict behaviors (spamming etc) and not to solve personal quarrels or disagreements.
I never mention people or their personal traits on communities, because we can point behaviors that are undesirable to the collective.
When someone is flagged, loses reputation and a part of the gains on that post, and the effects are proportional to the flagger's SP, but your SP, Steem or SBD will always remain intact and nobody can touch it.
Only a very low percentage of Flaggers use it out of context.
SteemCleaner and Cheetah(with little minor errors) are making a good job since I arrived on Steemit.
Well, I can't say the same about some Steemit police, that sometimes makes mistakes (I was a victim once), but the community can in the last instance be the final judge.
This ecosystem has fewer problems than any other I know, but it is a normal mirror of overall society.
Every day there is a pool of rewards ( the honeypot), and there are bees making good pollen with quality content and feed the hive, and the African bees that want to rip the hive.
Well, some want "To Be" and some want "To Have" like we use spirit or mater as the goals of life.
So the last longing path of creating good content is the way if we want a lasting long-term effect for each one and for Steemit.
Hope I answered some part of your questions, but Steemit is about learning a new world that we can make better and you have the risk of falling in love with the beautiful community of bright minded and generous people. The way Steemit works is normal this kind of problems for a brand new baby that we must learn to feed and raise.
We must separate the problems of steemit from the beautiful crowd.
We must never discuss the personal traits of victims or the perpetrators, but objectively point out the undesirable behaviors so that the community can flourish.
"I'm here for the community"
I found another victim. This one was flagged for copy/pasting invisible meta data tags multiple times on a single post.
This time I just picked a post out of a long list during an audit of SteemCleaners' rewards and transactions, using SteemWorld. Let's just say that the Guard / Cheetah / SteemCleaners activities are very profitable for a select few. Substantial STEEM (>$10k/mo.) rewards are transferred to bittrex from just a couple accounts. The figure above is from one account. Not a bad income, right?
I've suggested a Steem Community referendum. Ted Scott was tagged. He had been tagged in the comment thread, so I added him too. Who know what may come of the suggestion.
You're right though. The subject matter is out of context on this post. Haven't found the 'What do you do when you find the Steemit platform is being gamed?' post yet. I doubt I ever will. Cheers, Charlie.