After re-reading the original post, I think I'm starting to understand your points.
One of the issues with the current implementation of downvotes is that they are a lot more powerful than upvotes, in regards to censorship. For example (I'm making these numbers up to illustrate a point), an upvote on a blank post from a whale X could get it from $0 to $10 in rewards and barely improve its ranking.
A downvote from whale X on a post with $200 could remove $50 in rewards, and obliterate posts ranking.
Would it make sense to change the implementation to require a consensus on downvotes, if down-votes should be made equal to upvotes, so that down-votes would have their own pool that starts at 0, just like the upvote pool. This way, a $50 reduction would require same amount of down-vote consensus as the $50 increase.
Could this at least partially reduce potential for abuse?
Another question I have is that if Steemit shards into sub-reddits, would it make sense that each community gains the ability to set its own rules (or community guidelines) for what the desired behavior is?
An upvote and down vote have equal power if you compare equal times.
A post with $200 with an up vote of X would add $75 while a down vote would only remove $50.
The order of voting shouldn't matter when calculating its impact on the final reward.
Likely what actually happens is they up voted using a sliding value for their voting power, and then when they down voted they used a higher percentage on that slider. This is speculation on my part.