I completely agree with you. When one or an extremely small number of people hold the power to choose something like that it can lead to dangerous situations. I don't think it's a one person job anyways because that isn't scaleable. As more and more people come to hive there will be more instances of abuse. There's no way they can handle the growth of hive by themselves. If they truly cared for hive they wouldn't be self serving and would look to expand policing in a fair, ethical, and scaleable way.
I also agree on the voting of a person who has changed from their past mistakes. It makes no sense to have a downvote button if it means to ALWAYS hold the persons history against them. If they learned to make more engaging content and cited it, then they deserve to get votes. It's as simple as that. A past doesn't define a person, it's what they do with their history to change is what matters.
Thanks for the good read! It's a concept that we, as a community, need to think about.