Usually by only a portion because I don't think I should be the only one making these adjustments.

This kind of behavior earns my respect and won't likely scare many people off chain. That's wielding power responsibly. If it weren't for one or two people getting off on their ability to singlehandedly destroy a post (often for arbitrary reasons), I don't think downvotes would be a big problem. As it is though, one or two bullies have the potential to scare a lot of users away, and more users means more projects will want to build on Hive and more investment with it.

We have downvotes as a check on abusive upvotes, wouldn't it make sense to have some kind of check on abusive downvotes?

Also, It sounds like you don't like having rewards for content on the first layer. Is that a popular opinion among the devs and other large stakeholders you talk to? If so then why wasn't it removed earlier to avoid confusion?