Like you, I too came to Steemit with an open mind and, as a blogger, quickly embraced the concept of it all. I grew organically without the help of bots, delegations or vote buying. I invested my own money. Then I ran into a bully and to me, many of his posts (still are) are of a negative nature - vile to be more precise. What I quickly noticed is this multiple account holder's self-policing actions on the platform were designed to identify and report Steemians for large self-upvoting and rewards pool abuses, while in fact profiting substantially for the very same abuses. When I called this individual a hypocrite, I was quickly attacked, and for the longest time my humble rewards were taken from me through flagging of all my content. I soon had had enough and powered down most of my SP. I hated to leave but it made no sense to hang around and have every post and comment I submitted flagged into oblivion. It has been a couple months now and the attacks have disappeard. I just don't know if it is safe for me to go back into the water. Unlike your experience, there was no respect given or did he evenattempt to explain his actions. I had some good people on Steemit chat intervene and try to mediate but the vile and vulgar reponses continued. There was never any chance for a conversation which migh have led to a more positive outcome. I'm happy to see posts like yours which help guide people through the platform's manyt complexities. Initially on Steemit, I noticed that there was this level of respect between good content creators and those that joined in the conversation, but even some of that became tainted with negativity. When that happens, a good experience becomes overshadowed by the nastiness that permeates the platform. For the most part, conflicts still remain on Steemit, and you can avoid it all if you learn to recognize and simply avoid it. Connecting with people who have like-minded interests lends itself to positivity and more success. Avoiding the negative people and you will go much farther than you could have ever hoped for. Thanks for giving me the courage to re-enter the dark, cold waters that Steemit has become. I'll just hang out in the shallows, where it is much warmer, for now.