RE: A recourse for preventing the abuse of flagging/downvotes
There should also be a means of challenging a flag whereby it can be removed if enough users agree with the challenger, perhaps by indicating their agreement through voting on this flag comment accordingly.
I think this would be contrary to this goal:
It's important that we preserve the integrity of Steemit by making sure that such abuses of the system are discouraged as much as possible, and that the value of a post can be determined by the community freely and fairly without being skewed by needless flagging.
Everything here is based on vested stake in ownership and reputation. If someone with high stake flags something, they are putting their reputation on the line with that vote. If the community disagrees with them, they may lose followers and future influence.
I've noticed many down flags I disagree with are actually meaningless. They have no power behind them. I had a downflag on one of my posts and I happened to notice a conversation with that person, apologizing to someone else because they didn't understand how the system works. I left a polite reply and they were happy to reverse their flag and give me an upvote, which was their original intention. I think the system is working rather well so far, but then again, I haven't been blasted by any downvote bots (yet).
Yeah I understand your and @pfunk 's argument. I think our difference of opinion is based on the distinction between what's going on in the UI versus what that translates to under the hood. My argument is based on the semantics of the issue (i.e. calling it flagging etc.) whereas yours is more based on the technical side of things. Both are valid.
I will say that I think it's important to understand that for a lot of less knowledgeable users (like the one you describe) the way the UI is designed has a direct impact on the way they use the system, so although it's not the "meat and potatoes" it still carries a lot of weight in that regard. If the devs understand this (which I'm sure they do) then we can infer that they did mean for people to think of flagging differently to downvoting. I think that distinction could definitely do with some more refinement though, which would resolve this debate pretty effectively.
except that certain whales - @berniesanders for instance - will use a downflag bot and suddenly a 5000 upvote post is getting diddly squat because it has just 40 flags.