About the current/future whale diggers, one possibility I haven't heard mentioned would be very simple and would dilute the initial distribution: increase the reward. There's at least a precedent for changing the reward system in Clams.
That certainly has a couple of benefits over decreasing the 4.6 CLAM reward:
It might also very well prompt a massive increase in the rate of digging. This digger very likely sped up his digging in response to talk of a fork that would prevent him from digging the rest. If a big increase in the staking rate is proposed, others will likely accelerate their digging as well.
Instead we should leave well enough alone, stop creating more evidence in support of the law of unintended consequences, and allow confidence to recover. With the damage that is already done that will take some time already, but it can happen.
1) We don't have to break any promises. "If you owned BTC you may already own CLAM!" stays true. The 4.6 per address that you "may already own!" stays there. We aren't accused of deleting people's property.
No, you will be accused of diluting people's property instead. Congratulations.
It's a rolling window of 1 week. It's not like a petition has a week to gather support. It lives until it gains 50% (or whatever) support over any 1 week period
What happens when support subsequently changes after the 50% support is reached? Coins change hands, opinions change and suddenly something that had 50% support last week doesn't this week. This week being an excellent example since apparently 200K+ coins have apparently changed hands.
The most meaningful proposals will be ones that are ready to implement quickly if supported. Otherwise the voting should continue and the 10K window be viewed as just that, an ongoing "window" into current opinion of stakeholders. Or alternately a second vote can be held at a later date to reaffirm, once an implementation is ready.
This of course won't be an issue for uncontroversial proposals that will get significant support regardless of the time window. It is my hope that stakeholders are enlightened enough to decline to vote for controversial proposals where the inevitable conflict will cause damage to the community even if they personally believe the idea is a good one (and instead work to educate the community such that if the idea really is a good one, support can be achieved). This will force those putting forth a proposal to craft it in a manner that gains overwhelming support instead of trying to use the voting mechanism as a PR tool to legitimize a 51% attack. I'm not entirely optimistic, but we will see.