I worked probably twelve hours on my previous post. First I wrote it on Scrivner. I imported URL addresses from Pixabay ( https://pixabay.com/ ) to illustrate it. Then I cut and pasted my project to the Steemit "submit a story"...and the system crashed. That was odd.
I tried to fix it myself. First I tried to cut and past it a paragraph at a time. This worked better but it didn't work well. For one thing there was no preview. When I'd almost completed the transfer of the thousand word post the system crashed again.
Huh...I wonder if the problem is with my machine? I have a Mac Mini. (I don't like it very much. I'm a writer and Scrivner is a GREAT tool to write books with but at the time I wanted to start writing scifi books it was only available on mac. so I got a mini-mac. Sadly enough Windows works better.) The problem was still there.
Then I went onto Steem-chat and solicited advice. Several people were there who were very nice. They suggested solutions to my problem. I tried first one thing then another. I removed all of the pixabay URL's. Nope, didn't help. I converted to plain text stripping out all of the formatting. Nope that didn't work. So I gave up for a couple of hours and surfed the internet, went outside on the patio and smoked a cigar and thought about it.
After a few hours I came back inside and begin to transfer one paragraph at a time of plain text (no formating) to Stemit. This seemed to work better, I had a preview, so I got brave and added pictures. I went to pixabay again (free illustrations for what ever you want including commercial use - https://pixabay.com/ ) and laboriously used MarkUp to format it.
I spent many hours and still was not completely satisfied with the result but the perfect is the enemy of 'good enough'. I wanted to post to test out my theory about garnering votes, so I posted. Then I went back outside to drink coffee and smoke the remainder of the earlier cigar.
I watched the sun up. (I work at night and sleep in the day) Then come back inside to see what had happened. I cautiously expected to see several votes. Imagine my surprise and dismay when I discovered that my post was greyed out. It had been flagged.
Now why would that happen? I'd followed the rules to the letter.
I investigated. I back tracked the flagger, r4fken who had downvoted it. I went to his blog to investigate it. It appears that he downvotes a LOT.
Why would anyone do that?
Several hours of work...apparently wasted.
Now I am hesitant. I had been extolling the virtue of steemit to my friends on FaceBook as having zero censorship and freedom. Now I can't say that. I've had my time wasted, and potential income averted...for what?
Malicious flagging?