I like the idea that downvotes don't kill a preproposal, since we've seen lots of people vote for a pre-proposal just so it passes into the broader game. I have two points that I'd like to perhaps clarify? [edit - three points]
FIRSTLY: If we make this change, can we still encourage and measure opposition votes?
I suspect that pre-proposals will have a tendency to look past much of the constructive feedback between the preproposal stage and the final proposal stage, since there is no way to measure actual opposition. One can naturally expect there will be a tendency to prioritize keeping supporters, rather than working with opposition since their impact can't be measured easily. Perhaps we still encourage and measure downvotes, but they don't prevent the proposal from advancing?
Then the preliminary downvotes should somehow be disclosed or addressed in the final version of the actual SPS Proposal vote?
SECONDLY: Once a proposal is "out there" - should it be a "public good," instead of owned by the initiator?
As another concern, we've also seen that, in practice, proposals have been considered "owned" by the initiator... despite the fact that it is the community that decides whether they advance. Just as an example, @yabapmatt.sps - you made a suggestion and "asked" @theukm about modifying the anti-bot proposal. At that point, theukm's initial proposal already had enough support to have met the 5% vote to advance. But he, alone, had sole authority to modify the proposal drastically, even after a number of voters had already cast votes and it was the community, not theukm, that had voted to advance the initial version of the proposal.
Ultimately, the sps community voted to approve the modified version, but once the community starts voting, I don't know that a preproposal should be owned by the initiator anymore? And especially, after a preproposal meets a level of support to advance, if feedback should be consolidated and advanced by the community leaders, Splinterlands, or something similarly independent?
The reason I think of this is, let's say an initial proposal was advanced, and based on feedback from the community, there was a block of 5% that voted to modify and advance a modified version. Can the initial submitter kill a community voted proposal, and withdraw their proposal if it's not in line with the initial vision, or has it become a public good once it's submitted?
THIRDLY: Can we include an ability to fast track pre-proposals and proposals if they are time sensitive?
We saw with the Vruz proposal that it was killed due to a concern that there was a dangerous precedent of acting before authorized.
I'd suggest that a pre-proposal can be somehow be labelled as time-sensitive, and as soon as it hits the required 5% threshold, it is eligible to advance to the game. There should also be an option for a shortened official voting period as well, although it should require a sufficiently large base of voters to pass it. This is to give the DAO a mechanism to act quickly if conditions warrant it (e.g. a collapse of a DAO owned stablecoin, or some other black swan event)