Congratulations on 10k!
I'll also contribute to the choruse saying how much effort and goodness that you've put into the Steemit community, there are very good reasons that you have so many followers!
You are absolutely right that you should use your vote, resteem voluntarily and only as you see fit.

I do however disagree with your reluctance to downvote or flag things that you feel should be flagged. I think that there are times that complacency becomes complicity.

In online communities or off-line for that matter it is important to clearly oppose things such as hate speech and so on; to not do so lends those voices tacit support and that voice becomes louder and more influential as a result.

An example from a game (EVE): some groups are incredibly toxic, filled with misogenic, racist and overall hateful text and speech on their forums, chat channels etc, they often don't start that way, but a few slurs are tolerated and then a few more, it just goes downhill from there. I've watched it happen several times.

Now, I'm part of a group that actively discourages those kinds of postings (you'll get warned, and if you choose to continue, banned) and it is a very welcoming group indeed, a great many silly things are tollerated, just not any kind of bigotry. Seriously, the best, most civil group of 1000s of people playing a game where backstabbing and treachery is the norm.
This is summed up in the groups mottos "Be Brave" and "Stay Classy".

7o fellow newbies!

"Be Brave" is a part of it as even in an annonymous online game, standing up against bigotry does take courage; likely more so here on steemit where a record of it is encoded into the block chain and is much less annonymous.