In reply to @sigmajin - with respect, I'm not talking about a cultural norm forming out of the actions of whales, I'm talking about the one forming around how the majority of Steemians would like the flags to be used. For some individuals that may shift around a bit as time goes by because the flags can be deployed whenever someone wants to deploy them.

I don't know anything about your assertions regarding writers.I thought the downvote was changed to a flag in the hope that people would not engage for negative reasons. Is there any need to let someone know you don't like their post? The flags have been used to control rewards, to punish posts or comments, to discourage material, to show dislike, to indicate plagiarism etc That's a pretty broad brush open to broad interpretation.