A recent bit of banter between a whale and the new dolphin in town has provoked a debate about what determines appropriate flagging and how the steemit platform should enforce rules on flagging.

I’m not about to take sides here.

While I disagree with @berniesanders reason for flagging @dollarvigilante’s post as he deemed it repetitive and below his standard of creative ability I’m also glad he was allowed to flag it for those reasons!

Why?

At present, the appropriate use of flagging is yours to determine. You get to decide what you consider right or wrong. In my eyes, this is the beauty of steemit!

No censorship!

A flag doesn’t hide your material completely, it just sets you back if you had been trending. In most cases, this is fair as the free market goes.

But there are some cases in which you might not consider it fair. You might for example post something controversial. If the first people to see are people who agree with you it should do well. At present, the steemit community discourages eachother from flagging material just because you disagree with it. But at present our community is small. When steemit reaches the masses, a lot of things could change.

Flags as a downvote

If your controversial post for instance is first met with opposition you might lose your chance to be recognised by those who are more like-minded.

Unlucky I guess

For this reason I suggest

Accountability

I’ve often seen flagged material with a respectful comment from the flaggers (often when the flagger is a dolphin or a whale) outlining their reasons for flagging. I believe these are the people who have a lot of respect for the platform. They don’t like to have to flag material, but see it as necessary to make steemit a place where original content can do well. But not everybody knows how to respect their fellow steemers.
The most recent post by dollarvigilante was flagged 100+ times and I couldn’t find a single comment giving their reason.

Reasons for flagging

I’m listing these reasons in order of what I have personally seen most based on the comments

• Plagiarism
• Tag abuse
• Bots

Other reasons I have yet to see people excuse themselves with in the comments but I’m certain people have used as a reason

• Title that makes me think I won’t like this IF I were to read it
• Opinions I disagree with
• You’re making too much money
• You flagged my post so I flag yours!
  

Accountability

It is my belief that we should all be free to flag for whatever reasons we ourselves decide are appropriate. But just like in the real world, where we have freedom of speech, that freedom doesn’t protect you from my freedom to address you for what you’ve expressed.

There are two ways that I think steemers should be held accountable for their flagging.

1. Compulsory comment before the flag can be applied
2. A tab for flagged material

Compulsory comments

Some of the reasons outlined above as you can see will not be deemed by most steemers as appropriate reasons for flagging material. But telling newbies to have better flagging etiquette is going to get tiring.

There are a number of benefits

• If your reason for flagging content was a stupid one, having to comment your reason might make you think twice as you type it and realise that this is stupid!
• When somebody flags for reasons based on the title without reading the post, their comment can be responded to bringing their mistake to their attention and they can then choose to remove the flag.
• Instead of somewhat censoring (but not completely) the content that maybe got into the wrong hands too soon, a compulsory comment will make the article active, which means there is still a chance for like-minded people to see it and bring it back to life.

A Flagged Tab

Compulsory comments alone though won’t solve the problem. Plenty of people are clever enough to come up with reasons other than the real one if they know the real one would be unpopular. So how can you tell when somebody who says

“I’m flagging for false information”

when what they really mean is

“I’m flagging every post by this account because they flagged one of my posts last month and I can’t get the stick out of my ass over it”?

Wouldn’t it be handy to check this flaggers page, go to their Flags tab and actually see that they’ve been abusing this steemer?!

How do you think the steemit community would react to this?

It certainly wouldn’t be encouraged!

And you could also see by the type of content they’ve been flagging if it’s just based on their overrated opinions then you can theoretically dismiss their flag.

Which brings me to a third option which seems a little less conceivable but I thought I’d include it as an idea just in case.

We can already ‘Hide’ certain bloggers posts.

What if we could also hide their flags?