I have some ideas but unfortunately, they will be censored and hidden here so I will also post them on Twitter where they are not censored and hidden.
Flagging
There should be some kind of rules for flagging and Steemit should be the one to approve or disapprove it. This will stop all the flagging for no reason and the multiple flagging on one blog. Multiple flagging causes your account score to go down and now you see when its below 0, everything you post is hidden. I think that's how you want it though Ned.
The whales have gone "rogue".
Flagging shouldn't take away #STEEM that has already been given to you by other members. Members who up vote your blog obviously see value in it. That value shouldn't be canceled out by someone with more STEEM power and take away that rewarded STEEM.
Bots
It's crazy how anyone can make a bot to flag blogs for whatever reason they feel like. It's very annoying and it pisses off a lot of people. I have seen whales post about flagging someone so make their score so low that their blogs are hidden, like @I have some ideas but unfortunately, they will be censored and hidden here so I will also post them on Twitter where they are not censored and hidden, like @patrice does. This makes Steemit centralized.
Favoritism
The same members who make up these rules, don't apply them to their whale friends. Favoritism is bad and makes Steemit look like a Pyramid Scheme.
Some of what you wrote I agree with, but not the proposed solution. Your comments also show up just fine on Busy.org etc.
I don't have a full solution yet, but I'm thinking about it from time to time. Unfortunately it will probably be a hard sell and if implemented the wrong way could be dangerous, which is why I've not talked a lot about it this far.
Neither Busy.org or beta.Chainbb.com utilizes the flag icon or hides messages. As far as I know, messages only become collapsed on Steemit and blacked out on eSteem.
I think it's unfortunate that there's only one downvote/'flag' button. Imo flag symbols and reputation attacks can work well against abuse, but such functions should be separated from simple content downvotes. This would help encourage opinionated voting and discourage reputation games.
To directly answer your question, I encourage downvoting based on personal taste as long as you also switch to better sites/apps and ask developers to make this change to the way downvotes work.
We need to stop talking so much about Steemit, frankly. Steemit is irrelevant compared(!) to Steem.
If this network is to survive, we can't make ourselves psychologically, technologically or economically dependant on Steemit. If we choose to do that for long enough, this becomes just another network among the many.