I agree with your current decision right now regarding swipe to upvote. It seems unintuitive to me and with how tall my phone is, I assume there's going to be a lot of mistake upvotes. I've tried another app with multiple actions that are triggered by varying degrees of swiping and it I would have to consciously control my swipes which seems harder than simply pressing a button.

I use both current gestures to the left and right and the community pane is pretty important. If anything, it allows easier access to rules or info for reference. I would like this to stay the same though I can suggest adding the community pane through the three dots/hamburger menu at the top like my previous reddit app.