[DaSHacka]

You should enable showdead in your user preferences, I think you may be surprised to see what gets flagged.

I think the big issue is new accounts aren't allowed to downvote posts, but can flag them. In effect, the "flag" merely becomes the new downvote, leading to unpopular but relatively high-efffort coments becoming dead and invisible rather than downvoted.

Honestly just switching the two around (anyone can downvote, but only 500+ karma can flag) would go a long way to ensure only actual low-effort posts and spam get flagged, and unpopular posts get downvoted. As it is now, I rarely see an unpopular opinion that was downvoted and isn't already flagged.