Okay. Your post merely reinforced my belief that downvote abuse is much too easy, and almost never countered. In fact, the way the system is set up, there is no effective way to counter the abuse. I'm not sure alfa would be persuaded, though.

Some have said that the 'community' can counter any supposed downvote abuse by simply upvoting the content to overcome the DVs. There are two major flaws with that argument.

The first deals with timing. A large stakeholder intent on punishing another accountholder can simply wait until the very last minute and apply the DV, thus negating any chance of the 'community' coming to the rescue of the author.

Secondly, even if the community does 'come the rescue' by upvoting a heavily-downvoted post, they are doing so to their own detriment, because their curation rewards are reduced proportionately to the size of the downvote. Whereas DVs cost the DV'er nothing, the malicious downvoter, intent on abusing another accountholder, can do so ad infinitum because it costs them nothing, but is costly to both the targeted author and the community striving to support that author. At some point, the other side (author or curators or both) will grow tired of essentially subsidizing the DV'ers actions, with no end in sight.