RE: Hey!! You Reputation 50+ or Whales, A Call To Arms..
There are a few bots that help clean up the mess but there is a shortage of effort. You have a point about not wanting to rock the boat but regardless something has to be done collectively. I read a great post about how reputation is calculated here by @arcange. It explains how flag bots are not as effective as one may think because you need strong voting power to really make an effect on crap posts. Your whale call to arms is appropriate if this is correct.
I didn't quite find an answer if there is any kind of reward for flagging a post. The only reward I've noticed so far is the feeling of knowing I helped. I think more people are focused on getting a nice curation reward and don't want to lose voting power on flagging a post for a spammer that's about to spit out a post every 5 minutes.
When I'm a whale I'll be right there with you trying to help clean up the mess. I guess just like minnowsupport has a discord, there needs to be one for cleaners and there may already be one.
Apparently you can get a small payout for calling in @ steemcleaners if they agree with you. I would love to be on that team.. I hate spam as it hurts the community here.. I have special pet peeve for folks that just post stolen youtube videos over and over and over again...
Would love to be on that team myself. With so many new users signing up it is already easy to get your post buried. Spammers just make it worse. Steemcleaners also states they aren't trying to just flag everything but to guide the community in the right direction. If these are bots spamming, there's nobody on the other end to receive the message.