Well i don't mind helping you catch up... happy to jump on a voice chat at some point and answer lots more questions. Maybe it's something that can help lots more people if it was recorded and available for people.

"get paid when people like your stuff" is what's advertised to the public."
Certainly something we have long since moved away from specially on Peakd.com which is the most used interface for Hive.

Also because most people do use PeakD.com they do end up knowing about TIPS but future updates will focus even more on tips.

Paying for votes is a decision that most of the community has decided is not appropriate and the community is willing to downvote those sorts of actions.

In it's place there is the ability to pay to promote your posts on peakd.com ... it does end up burning about half the tokens so that it benefits all token holders.

Automation of downvotes is not something I can or want to defend it seems way too problematic.

I infrequently downvote and I tip more than most people so i'm not really the best person to ask about downvotes.

Also reputation is something that is loosing importance peakd will likely be the first to move it out of a position of importance and I know many are considering doing the same for hive.blog. Reputation won't go away but it just won't be shown in many places.

Also i know that future updates to peakd.com (again the most used interface for hive blogging) will put more emphasis on interactions like commenting and tipping. A heavy emphasis on voting has never led to sustainable success it's well documented. It's a fun perk but it's very very limited ... it has a set amount of hive tokens coming in each day and so it's a very limited resource and the more users means the more people competing for that limited resource. Interactions, Views, Tips are all UNLIMTED resources and so those people you are bringing in don't have to compete they simply can increase those things and they should lead to economic impact. Right now views doesn't directly lead to economic impact... BUT they will later this year.