Hello @timcliff I do really agreed with your change proposal, I do also decided to make a post presenting my opinion towards this subject, and also in a expectation that it could bring more people to inside this good discussion.
I'll let a link here, just in case you had some spare time to have a look, I your feedback would be really appreciated!

https://steemit.com/steemit/@andyluy/how-changes-are-made-on-steemit

Thank you for being such a great witnesses !

<b>*Steem on!*</b>

I agree with the move.
Why should someone have protection just because their reputation is high? 
This is a form of elitism, of which I am strongly against.  
In my country of Norway, we have a saying : "No one is above and no one is below"
Just as in the "real world" a person takes years to build a reputation, and they can also destroy it in a second too. Reputation was the old fashioned way of self policing. No one should be immune. 
Look at the case of the notorious Jimmy Savile of the BBC- His reputation protected him for his entire life but we now know he abused that reputation to abuse children.

I applaud this move @timcliff - If we are ever to have an true equal society, no one should have extra protection just because of their reputation.

I definitely feel this is a good idea. The biggest issue when it comes to anytime of cyber security is human beings and the trust we give to others. 

This would be esepcially prevelent if the user has a very high reputation. With high reputation usually comes more trust. I think it is definitely necessary to be able to hide comments regardless of their level. 

Why is there a need for this protection if the 65+ rep trust is inherent. Obviously, if the post garnered enough downvotes to hide the post, that person broke that trust and deserves to have a post hidden. 

Just my thoughts.

Good PR @timmcliff. Regardless of your reputation, a bad post  (or spam post) should be held in equal regard. If it gets sufficient flags, there is most likely an obvious reason, and so the protection on 65+ rep accounts should not be there. Most 65+ accounts won't need to worry about this, but it makes everyone equally accountable not to abuse the system.

I don't think rep protection is necessary anyway.  Just because it went up doesn't mean you can't lose it.

Yes, it would have greatly complicated the life of scammers. And then they have only to crack a user with a high reputation, and they can with impunity post any links.

Are there enough 65s to justify this exclusion in the first place?

I don't think anyone should be an exception to the rules. I am for that pull. Good idea. We already have corrupt politicians escaping justice because of their high standing. Steemit shouldn't emulate that concept.

This is the first time I read about this 'protection' mechanism. I don't see the difference between an account with rep higher than 65 and one lower, hence I believe the described behaviour needs to be removed. Or at least, the rep level need to be changed to a lower value. I've seen accounts with higher rep than 65 abusing Steemit, and I'm pretty sure this had nothing to do with a stolen account. My argument to remove this to me strange behaviour is that when someone miss-uses an account, it shall be made invisible regardless of rep. The question we can ask is "shall the UI enforce hiding of accounts/posts/comments when it gets downvotes?". I personally believe it shall be configurable by the user since many of the community members are in favour of freedom and why shall the UI then hide posts/comments when it gets downvotes? Just make clear it got downvotes, maybe with an icon so it is quickly seen? On the other hand, I understand the hiding feature of the Steemit UI, it ma prevent abusing posts and comments to get more rewards.\ which effects the reward payout distribution.

BTW, don't you think we should debate another topic on downvoting? The weight the votes gets based on Steem Power? Although I never run stats, I have the feeling (some of) the early adopters of Steemit who gained a lot of Steem Power and Rep over time, may misuse and abuse Steemit and nobody is able to do something against them, we simple have to little Steem Power abuse fighters in our community, while we for sure have to little high rep accounts that fight abuse.

This explains your previous post. I did not even know the existence of this protection.

This is just fair enough to prevent the 65+ reputation user from abusing or spamming their post. It is best to be fair in all areas of discipline.

Nice proposal @timcliff you just did a great thing in steemit world! Thumbs up to you buddy.

https://s1.postimg.org/13wfsb03en/The-_Benefits-of-a-_Ductless-_Mini-_Split-_System.jpg

You really deserve to be one of the witnesses.

While STINC is closed lip about everything going on with ddos and glitches and such, I think it is good to see witnesses like you @timcliff and @lukestokes to be active in actions like this or calls for updates and accountibility from steemit inc.

I really don't know what the answer is on this one.  I guess I would say treat everyone equally... Even 65+ steemians.

Peace

Good request to prevent abuse. Same law for all so that no one can be able to spam...///...///...///

I read your post and upvote it, its a good sharing for me as a newbie, thx @timcliff. You are so kind to share a good info

Duplicate comment - so sorry - I'm getting this often today.

You can't imagine how discouraging this is for little minnows. Here we swim - completely ignored, but you all have big business up top and none of it is any good. 

Use your power to downvote away! Keep fighting up there in your chats!  Leave the minnows with their 50 cent payouts. They will survive or not - but no one cares in the land of angry whales.

I'm all for this.  Selective protectionism does nothing for the website or for Steem by direct association.

There shouldn't be such protection in first place. One bad user can act as a gentle and noble user until reach 65 reputation score and then start to reveal his true self. So all measures should be same for everybody. Those who are naturally polite, gentle and ready to follow rules, they shouldn't fear of this.

Thanks for sharing!

I think that is a good idea to remove reputation protection.  Remove reputation of protection is preventing "abuse of power" conduct. Nice and good idea :)

Nice point, I agree with your stand.
For a 65+ reputation account to have such immunity is not fare at all. There is no guarantee or assurance that such a person wont default, abuse or go against the rules of the game.

When it comes to money i think no one can be trusted.

A very good argument. I too believe that all users of the platform should be held to the same standards. Posts should be up or downvoted based on their individual merit and not on whichever reputation score a member has achieved. Greater transparency will greatly reduce the tendency to abuse the platform and facilitate a higher degree of civility.

Tim you do a lot of good work here which is why I feel safe saying this pull request is doing more harm than good.

Downvoting bots on authors with 65+ reputations ruin the spirit of what you are trying to do with this pull request.  For example, I have a bot that follows me around and downvotes most every comment I make by the account name of  @veryscamfield.  See the downvotes at https://steemd.com/@veryscamfield.  This is an account created by @berniesanders and @nextgencrypto that automatically downvotes most of my comments.

Fortunately the reputation protection blocks this downvoting bot from hiding any of my comments with its dust vote.  Without this protection, one user could make a bot to automatically downvote any and all of our 65+ reputation authors and automatically hide comments on a huge scale.  There is no reason any of us should be expected to setup a bot to then autovote our comments back up to counter what already is prevented.

Your pull request means at no reputation level are we free from a dust voting bot hiding our comments and that it should then be our responsibility to auto upvote our own comments or to do it manually to counter this.

# Would you please remove this pull request because it is opening a bigger opportunity for exploitation than the one it hopes to close?

Regardless of reputation score, everyone puts their reputation on the line every time a post or comment is published, every time a vote is cast whether upward or downwards. If I post schlock with a rep score of 53 it will never rise and will likely fall.

For the rep score to mean ***anything*** it must be administered equally among all the members whether plankton or whale. Otherwise, we will **definitely** end up with too-powerful people in a centralized clique and steemit will not realize its potential as a decentralized community of equality among members.

If there are those among us who already think they are above the rules they've laid out for the community, then action is necessary now. Either we are equal here, or we are not. 

Kudos Tim.

Honestly I didn't know this rule. For this very case of phishing scamming, I  followed the update and see that account still spreading scamming replies. I agree with you in this case.

But it might do more harm than good. We've seen so many flag wars on Steemit, although myself never got incolved in any of those. Removing the SP protection might make it too easy for those who just buy SP to downvote. 

Rep itself doesn't fully do justice whether there're more likely to have scammers of low level than of high level. But removing it might make it too easy for scammers as well. 65+ rep users got stolen by a scammer is still a rare case. 

My suggestion would be to find a better rep calculation method.  BTW, see you at SteemFest.

Okay... we see one instance where a 65+ user account is misused.

Can we list out the possible negatives or exploits that could be had if the Pull request goes through?
- does it allow whale battles to go differently?  (not that whale battles are ever good...but they do happen)
- ??

Not sure on this one.  But don't mind the discussion.

Just think changes shouldn't be made for one event....usually.

thanks