I'm just going to state my opinions/views here rather than writing up an entire post, as you have covered it here.

Each reward system has its advantages, so either one will suffice the need to monetize/tokenize any front end.

Curation rewards at 25% or at 50% won't change the world.

In fact either is cool by me as at the end of the day engagement is wanted, no matter what front end we are looking at.

Rewarding "downvotes" = a pandoras box.

But if people want it, so be it.

I personally do not believe that this will end well. So far downvoting has only been utilized by very few people out there in a manner that adds value to any of the front ends.

Rewarding it, will just further enhance the BS and negativity that comes with the 99.99% of "opinionated" downvotes.

Human nature man, can't fix it!

Although we may not be 100% in agreement here, we are not in disagreement either, as we see things from different angles, but at the end of the day Steem needs a lot more than just fiddling around with internal numbers to make it everything it can be.

Cheers.