Thanks for the input on the penalizing of small votes. What you said jibes with what I've heard in the past, although I wasn't aware this also reduced voting on comments.

If I recall correctly, the original motivation was to make it difficult to do some sort of large scale, low value self-voting. But I may have that wrong, and even if that's the reason it was introduced, I'm not sure it solved any real problem. I'll try to dig up the reasons, and see if there are any compelling reasons to stick with it. But my first guess is there aren't any.