I think in a vivid community we need both: positive drive combined with mutual support - and constructive debate. Like in any other relationship :-)

I am worried that minnows with qualitative posts have no place in trending.

Hopefully the trending page will be less important, once the community feature is installed. Then attention may be spread more into the different sub-communities, and fields of interests could become much more attractive than pure financial outcome.

Downvotes actually don't take anything away from you since the reward is not yours until it's been transfered to your wallet. Still they make us feel uncomfortable... Buuut we've always the possibility to directly ask the downvoters for their reasons (e.g. at steemit.chat or on discord). I've done that a couple of times, and mostly it ended up in some nice conversations - no kidding :-)

Have a great day, and keep being positive :-)