This is the 2nd comment stating "people take it personally". It is personal. Smaller posters here use those rewards for real world purchases/bill/life. To be at the mercy of certain downvoters who may not agree with the stance/facts/views/opinions of the poster is an ugly place to be and will not lead to any growth.
I personally feel that some large whales involved in development and the crypto space overall are disconnected from who their customers could be.
Someone spending hours of "free time" a day putting out content about something they are passionate about in hopes of translating it into a small living is going to take it personally when someone with thousands of dollars sitting on a blockchain downvotes their work into the 7th circle of Hell just because they can.
My point being that if downvotes are used appropriately, then they should not be taken personally. It's not unreasonable, for example, to see a post that took 30 seconds to write and yet has hundreds in rewards and downvote it for disagreement with rewards. It's different if a whale is downvoting just because they disagree with you or you get stuck in a downvoting trail that always zeroes your post. I agree it's an imperfect system. Nobody except perhaps for other whales will typically dare to downvote a post of another whale for instance. I'm not sure what the solution is. But I don't think getting rid of the general mechanism is the right thing to do. Upvotes and Downvotes are critical to Hive but both have to be used reasonably.
I agree, the small posters here don't really get anything. They can try joining a community, but the long time favorite posters who have been here for years get the lions share of upvotes.
Generally speaking, the longer you are here, the more you are able to learn. That's because you collect followers over time, not all at once. With each post you are exposed to new potential upvoters. So yes, the more time you have been here the more you will earn but that does not require that you have been here from the beginning.
Which is why most new people on here make an account and quit pretty quickly. Their posts can't get upvotes and they can't get seen. This place also became more of a mess when they introduced communities, now I have half of the people posting stuff in #informationwar tag and the other half posting in Informationwar community. I have to go to two places now to make sure I see all of those posts, whereas before it was 1 place.
It's unfortunate that people expect fast, easy money. It's like sticking up a web page selling stuff and expecting to start making a lot in sales right away. That doesn't happen without a lot of work up front. You might use marketing and SEO in addition to providing a product that people want. On hive, you have to use persistence, participation and networking...in addition to making posts people want to read.
Communities have their advantages that I think outweigh the disadvantages. Personally, I don't find it to be a big deal to look at a tag and a community. I'm usually looking at multiple communities and tags anyway.