I think there is enough room for Hivewatchers to improve their proccess and better explaining to us how and why they do their thing.
I've been always against downvoting, mainly to prevent wars between users. I do agree that hivewatchers uses downvoting as a tool to clean the space, nothing more, nothing less.
I would like to see more info on how they distribute funding.

As I said above, more dialog witth community would enlighten people's view.

This is only my onw personal opinion.

Cheers