I replied to the sock-puppet abuse part in the other comment.

Regarding the downvotes, yes - there always will be a stigma associated with this.

There are really two separate issues:

• Dolphins/Minnows feeling powerless with the current voting distribution
• People get upset/hurt when they get downvoted and lose rewards

The proposed solution does not address the second issue. It arguably will make it worse, since there probably will be more downvoting. I guess whether or not this gets significantly worse depends on how much perceived abuse there is, and how actively the moderators are dealing with it.