Good evening,
This is diving really deep in proffering answers, ogeewitty loves deep dives sir. I'm delighted seeing new things I can glean from.

My pick of them all is the conclusion –

"..if you are going to get Downvoted, it's better to get it for doing nothing wrong than for doing something you believe to be wrong. Haha."

So indeed there are inner workings to these things, the elephants sometimes fight and the grass suffers.🙂 It's okay o, I'm therefore advised to thread carefully be dat.

But on appeals, I know of the Hivewatchers team, they handle things like that.
Once whilst still new in Hive I joined a voting trail(School of minnows) that was clean(according to the organisers). It was going well for months until one day I noticed a downvote, then another, then it became normal in every blog I made.

I was alarmed, I saw the identity(spamminator), but I was too new in Hive to know who they were. I complained to the organisers and they led me to the channel of Hivewatchers, but I also requested that they come out and speak for me. It was eye-opening,reading their exchange with Hivewatchers, some of which were too technical for me to understand. It turned to be an issue between whales, just like you described.

Hivewatchers thus demanded I unsuscribe from the voting trail, to be free from spamminator downvotes. I spoke with the organisers privately and they wanting the best for me, agreed I do as Hivewatchers has said, but they swore that they would harass those whales behind the Hivewatchers directive.

It's indeed a tricky place Hive can be when you are slated for no fault of yours. Well we stay clean in our work here and God's grace sufficient.

Thanks a lot dear sire.

Remain cheerful.