Yeah, I think you (or was it someone in the comments?) covered the dangers of downvoting someone with more HP than yourself. I feel like Smooth is the only one in the enviable position to do that and not have to deal with the retaliation. I'm just glad he/she has decided to use it fairly benevolently. I know some will still complain at anything being taken off the top line as well, especially if they're used to receiving that level of votes. I've had to explain to a couple of people that Acid's downvotes are not a reflection of their content quality and thankfully they were accepting of the trim he decided they needed in the end.
BTW is good to know blocktrades is looking into the reputation score side of things. It's come up a few times over the years that it could really do with being revised. We have accounts on here who do a lot for the chain and community but rarely post, so their rep score is low, then accounts that are constantly posting mediocre stuff with high rep scores, but they aren't really involved with anything and regularly power down.