When a post is upvoted, it's upvoted because the upvoter feels that particular post should be rewarded more. When a post is downvoted, it's downvoted because the downvoter feels that particular post should be rewarded less. It doesn't have to be anything personal, it's not like all upvotes are personal, either.

Wow - just, wow. It's extremely rare that I read something like this which completely changes the way I have thought about something.

A big part of the problem and why people (including myself) don't see it the way you are describing is because in the UI it is called "flagging" instead of "downvoting" which has a completely different connotation.

I've heard people say before that it shouldn't be called "flagging" but I didn't understand why and thought that "flagging" was a fine thing to call it because that's how I thought downvotes were supposed to be used.

Thanks to you it's clear to me now that downvoting and flagging are very different and I think SteemIt would benefit from having both. Downvoting would be what "flagging" is now - and should be used just like the opposite of upvoting.

Then a separate "flagging" feature should be added to flag posts that are illegal, inappropriate, spam, etc. Flagged posts would often also be downvoted, but downvoted posts would not necessarily often be flagged.

Thank you for this!