Abusive downvotes are a serious problem.
Has anyone considered capping downvotes (and upvotes) at 1 hive, in order to make payouts more reflective of "the community" and not just the "whim of a random whale"?
Any system that allows an individual whale (or a small number of whale pals) to over-ride the "community consensus" of hundreds or thousands of minnows is going to make those smaller fish feel like this is a place where the established oligarchy picks winners and losers as they see fit (with no accountability).
A 1 one hive cap wouldn't work, because someone could just create a bunch of 1 hive accounts and vote with them. This would actually allow smaller stakeholders to abuse the voting system, making easier for a malicious actor to downvote against community consensus.
But I do have ideas for how to approach this problem as part of the web-of-trust system that I'm planning. But that's a big topic and I'll be approaching discussions of it slowly, once we've finished our current optimization work.
Awesome, I look forward to examining your proposals.