Yes and No, depending.
I would like to suggest the flag/down-vote terminology should be implemented according to impact.
- If the flag/downvote is going to result in reputation damage, call it a flag.
- If the flag/downvote only has concequences for the pay-out amount but not to the reputation, call it a downvote.
Ideally, I think, a change to the underlying APIs would be needed to further untangle the situation according to intent.
- Ideally, a high-rep individual should get the option to do an actual downvote without reputation damage to the receiving party. That is, a high rep individual should get both options where the downvote option should be free of inflicting reputation damage regardless of reputations involved.
- Expanding on this idea, a reputation-impact-free version of upvotes could help fix the inflated reputation problem caused by the use of bid bots. Allow bid-bots to drop their reputation lifting capacity voluntarily and user initiatives could declare open seizon on reputation-inflation bid-bot users if they would see fit to do so.
terminology is important, but it does not change the ontological state of the world. For the one who suffers from cancer, cancer is cancer. It does not matter to him/her that there is also a benign form. And this network suffers.
ideally, a network consists of users, it derives its value by the number of users or more correctly the number of connections which can be established between nodes. Humans have a sense of fairness and they want fairness.
What's the point in inflating one ideological opinion of a high SP account and force it up on the whole network? One opinion (regardless of the SP) ideally does not matter in a society and if the opinions matters due to an ill algorithm/politics aka. lobbyism, then it hurts the reputation of the network aka. society.
(Im counting down the number of daily active users since months now and it gets lower an lower)
we are a little bit up today @ 3900 Users lel. Subtract the bots, divide by the number of actual subnetworks due to language barriers and apply a network model (e.g. metcalfe) to those and you see that Steem is going to die (or simply look into your feed). When a network reaches a certain threshold, then each node comes to a point where it can't make enough connections to derive any use from the network anymore aka. it becomes a boring and useless platform. It does not matter if the remaining users are "whales" fuck them, really fuck them it would be also in their interest.
Would I prefer to be spanked or beaten?
Well neither actually, which is why I powered down all my Steemit accounts and quit posting.
I wonder if whales will enjoy their public masturbation so much when nobody is watching...