You ain't ever gonna get a vibrant, independently minded community if you let the midwit indulge in their mid wittery games by leaving it unopposed

I think you answered your question right there.

The downvote button is a useful tool in disagreeing with rewards. We have other useful tools like simply communicating through the platform, but to use the cancer analogy, the downvote button is like a scalpel to remove a tumor, which is obviously very useful if you can just see something there that clearly shouldn't be there and is hurting the host. You are very clear on what we are trying to do here so I think most would agree with your reasoning about why something was downvoted . The explanation gives the user an opportunity to make their case, but the downvote is the real incentive to change course.