I would be in favor of allowing both upvotes and tips for posts and the distinction would be that tips would be money that is not coming from the shared rewards pool. I've said in the past that I would be in favor of having multiple streams of reward pools which could potentially bridge different platforms, blockchains, ecosystems, websites, apps, wallets, cryptocurrency exchange markets like Bittrex, and whatever else there may be potentially speaking.
Of course, I'm not saying multiple reward pools would work but my argument is that a singular rewards pool might be a bit too centralized and anti-competitive and too manipulative in a free market; and I would love it if different cryptocurrencies could be used as opposed to it being limited to just Hive, Hive Power (HP), Hive Backed Dollars (HBD); and Steem merged with Tron meaning an added crypto (but I am still against Dlive Overlord Justin Sun). So, long story short, not saying any of these ideas would work but I would encourage people to explore the possibility of making things more decentralized, competitive, open-source, flexible, to increase options, possibilities, potential, independence, etc.
I'm partly resistant or against a shared rewards pool in that we all fight over it on the Hive blockchain. I prefer how miners are able to earn on the Bitcoin blockchain and I know I might be comparing apples with oranges to the extent that Hive is not Bitcoin meaning the details are different as Hive and Steemit has Witnesses as opposed to Bitcoin Miners. I am aware of the debates between proof of brains (PoB) and proof of works (PoW) and proof of concept (PoC) and proof of value (PoV) and whatever else is out there, those are the four proofs I can think of from the top of my head or I just DuckDuckGoed it, so I cheated, but I am not going to say I absolutely can state which of these 4 is the best or if it depends or not. But I am going to say that is why I prefer having the option to tip and not just to upvote. Well, I think somebody said PeakD has an option to tip a post. So, if that's the case, then that is good.
Specifically in regards to the downvoting debate, I've been flagged many times on Steemit and Hive going back to 2017 and I've written a lot about these things in the past.
We should have not just a downvote button but also a dislike button as well. I would even consider an attempt at adding a third button to that as well, a flagging button that would go beyond just downvoting.
Some have said a downvote can bring down the potential rewards of a post which is good if a post is making more than it deserves. So, the argument states downvotes helps give the post redistributional balance or goes that illogical Obama theory.
The purpose of the flagging button would not be to state that a post is making too much money (since that is the purpose of a downvote) but instead a flagging button could be there to state that the post should not be made in the first place, that it should not be there. In other words, a flag could equate to when a community owner mutes a post in a group, a tribe, a community. Well, I am not absolutely endorsing downvotes or flags and yet I do understand the value they can have in theory or perhaps in reality as well.
Perhaps, if an account is really bad for example, if the account publishes posts which are full of plagiarism, spam, repetition, and/or whatever people choose not to tolerate, etc, then not only could the posts be flagged but how about we add side panel with information or posts or text or links stating that the posts and the users are stealing the intellectual property, the articles, the videos, the art, etc, etc, whatever it may be. Well, I can't say how all of that would work specifically but again all of this would be advance features which users and developers could debate over implementing or not implementing and everything else.
I like what Logic Zombie @logiczombie is saying regarding having Flag-Trial Jurors, we could call it a Flag-Trial. I agree, only one flag per post or possibly per account or per year or per topic or per situation and more than one flag per post would be too many because, you know, as they say that would be double jeopardy in a court of law to try the same case again and again. So, instead of having dislikes, downvotes, and flags, we could have Flag Trials instead or Flag Trials and dislikes and mute options.
Perhaps some posts and some users could be voted off the rewards pool if they are flagged too much and then they would have to be voted back onto the island later on if they are found to be deserving back onto the main rewards pool. Perhaps they could still exist on other reward pools or other tokens but those tribes should be given the right to vote them off their too.
Some people can argue that is censorship and I would counter with how the posts would not be removed or stolen but that future rewards would be limited or unavailable to an account who is currently in Flag-Prison which comes following Flag-Trial. And I don't know if we want to tinker with Resource Credits (RC or mana) in order to limit how much or how often a Flag-Prisoner can post and comment. And I don't want to turn Hive into Facebook which as we may all know has Facebook Prison.
So, in conclusion, I've been in these debates for years regarding flags and everything like I said and the final thing I want to say for now is I hope we can help people who are new to Hive in context to all of this drama and also I hope flags cannot be abused to target people unfairly and I would say I was flagged unfairly many times on Steemit and Hive over the years. Which leads me to say perhaps flaggers should be put in Flag-Trial as well if they are found to be abusing the Flag button. That might be a way to keep the flaggers honest. Perhaps find a way to allow enough users and witnesses to put accounts on trial if they are found abusing the downvote/flag button because knowing you could be put in a special Flagger Trial could give you just enough fear to keep you honest kind of thing.