This is a very important discussion, indeed!
You made me think about this...
First of all: Flags are an integral part of this system. A tool (given to us by the gods of the code ;-) )
Every tool can be used to do very subjectively "good" and "bad", depending on the person using this tool.
Secondly: It's up to the community to educate all those newcomers, what a flag is (only problem... it seems, that there is a very deep gap about what will be taught. The bigger part ( coming indoctrinated from other SocialMedia ) are not used to the "negative" downvote part, thus seeing the use of the tool as "bad". The other part (I think in total this must be the much smaller, but more SP-powered part) may already have understood what a flag means.
Most are not aware, that flagging overrewarded posts means "more" rewards for everybody else. Possibly by just hiding the rewards, there will be enough psychological impact, that there is much less personal drama on "lost" rewards. ( I am aware that this number is needed in a lot of processes to find out "trending", "hot" ... but just hiding might be enough)
So what to do:
Overcoming shortterm opportunism to create longterm benefit for everybody. There are loads of issues to be fixed, but generally spoken in a "agree to disagree"-way instead of a "rule"-way.
The way it would work for myself:
- I think, I flagged twice so far (both times for plagiarism), and I don't feel very proud about it. I don't care too much with the little voting power I have (seeing the numbers, this is true for the major part of the community)
- I continue to vote for my own posts, but stopped doing it for my comments, even though it is tempting and fast earned money. #rewardpoolrape
-I will try to gently tell people that they would have gotten my upvote for their comment if they did not vote for themselves in the first place. I hope this will "educate" in a way that I prefer and if enough bigger stakes would do this (YEPP it's a time issue) this "selfvoting-comments"-problem would be fixed very fast.
I think flagging is for the rich. It's okay to beat up a minnow. They ae powerless to do anything. But, if you mix it up with a whale, say over their posts being overrewarded. You can lose big time.
Would you agree?