I am writing this to encourage others to do so. I would hope we could avoid people losing reputation because they didn't follow some rule they were never informed of.

The way some flag is a behavior which a bit like making up laws as you go along and be the judge and prosecutor. Well, I judge and flag or vote.

Principals of Voting

• Votes or flags should depend only on the post content rather than the author of the post.
• Flags should not be retaliatory and votes shouldn't be vote for vote
• Voting helps users find content.

Reasons to Flag

• Early on in the platform, the reasons to flag did not include disagreement of rewards but included "hate speech"(thought crimes), or mis-categorized content. Like the wrong tags.

Today, you must not make too much money, whatever that is. If it's porn, tag it with nsfw. If you're going to post something offensive, remember this will be here forever. So, you probably should be over 30 or you might find yourself getting offended by your own writings. Make sure the tags are relevant to the post!

Flag Wars

I have seen an on going war between those of great Steem power battle by flagging. One flags another and there is retaliatory flagging by the flagged user. It seems to me, as a user with little Steem power, I should stay out of these conflicts.

As a minnow

If say half the reward pool is going to rubbish posts, then I will earn several dollars less than I would have. If I flag rubbish, I could potentially face retaliatory flagging and only lower the vote reward by a few cents. Seems I should lay low and leave these potentially costly conflicts to those with a greater stake in the game. The whales should care more and pay more attention to these issues than one with a tiny stake.

Trending posts

I hate the idea of voting up trending posts. A vote for a trending post amplifies the reward and visibility of what has already been discovered. It does nothing good for the platform.

Self voting

I have heard even from whales that minnow self voting isn't bad for the platform. In fact, it is something encouraged. We by default have a self vote post check-box set on. So why shouldn't I?

Voting Declarations

Although not everything in these policy is for my self interest. I will need to get my Steem power up somehow. I want to avoid stepping on others' toes and so far I have avoided negative attention. For newbies, they may lack the intuition. I think it would be helpful if frequent flaggers would post a similar post.

Thanks a lot. Now vote this up or reply so I know I am not getting ignored.