Sometimes, people don't know who they're talking to and say something that offends the whale... most would just brush it off, but a couple of them will turn on you and pound you into the ground... I worked with both of these bloggers at the time, encouraging them foremost, but also trying to work out what they did to trigger the attack. Most of the time, if you ignore the whales, they ignore you, but not everyone can let things go like that... You can say what's right, but if they don't like it, they can chew you up.

It's possibly why they decided to remove flagging altogether over at Whaleshares, but that means there's little defense against plagiarists and other abusers... you win some, you lose some...