Perhaps limit the amount of time something can be downvoted - after a week or a month it can no longer be --d to limit someone with a grudge downvoting all of a person posts, loosing good information because of an unrelated bad feeling. This limit would not affect ++ - if someone finds information useful after it was written, it will most likely continue to be useful.

I don't know what type of logs are kept, but it might be possible to see if a monk downvotes much by a single user. Of course, this may be warrented like bravismore, but more likely would denote a grudge.

A collection of bots is unfortunately possible. Anywhere where lurking is allowed can give rise to it. However I know from my own experience that getting to understand the feel before becoming an active member of the community helps people adjust to the style, so I can't say lurking is bad.

The idea to get rid of the "use all votes bonus" would just slow a bot - they would still get a +1 after 25% of their votes. Moving the -- to a higher level then (2) would just delay that.

Perhaps taking the -- out of "automatic", where you have to reply to the node for it to count might work. I know this has been previously discussed and it has it's share of problems, but it would reduce grudges, and also take bootstamping from bots.

Any other ideas?

=Blue
...you might be eaten by a grue...