A well written post, and cover of the issues. I think there will always be issues such as you and others are experiencing. Over the course of the last two months the down voting because of subject matter has rapidly increased. Hive Block Chain is losing the status of a place that is inclusive to all points of view to one that is becoming decisive and limiting of viewpoint.
I don't know what the solution is other than for more people to take a proactive stance for keeping Hive Block Chain on the inclusive side of content and not using votes to try and control a particular narrative.
I think it's fair to say that the majority of the problem is coming from less than a handful of people and the community can definitely unite to stand up against them. That said, it might take some of the main stakeholders - aka top 20 witnesses, to get involved and it seems that they are too into silence in order to prevent loss of votes.
We may see a little change witness wise come next year, I am pretty sure the witness vote decay was part of HF 25, and that may cause some change in the top or at least some change in attitude if they wish to stay in the top 20.
Yes, the vote decay is in HF25 but they added a delay of 1 year to it.
I hope people will watch the up coming HF's and pay attention to them. I try to follow and add my two cents in on the HF post and the post building up to the hard forks, but there simply is not enough feedback on the post or the proposed actions, and @howo and @blocktrades do try to keep people informed of the dev chats, and the work being done.