Downvoting for reward disagreement was in the original vision of Steem. I think basic etiquette means you should tell someome why you are downvoting if no one else mentioned it and you feel they are genuinely confused.

I usually do if both those conditions are met.

I alsonthinknthere is nothing wrong with people banding together and deciding on their own standards. Expecting a hardfork is rather silly though.

Agreed, people should band together. But they should also decide if using VP to reverse downvotes is worth it or not when they develop a program. How else could you nerf downvotes in such a way?