[blackflame7000]

While I agree with you that arguments are not constructive, a healthy disagreement of differing opinions should not have the implicit correctness go to the person with the ability to downvote his adversary. Furthermore, there is a psychological aspect to voting positively for a negatively voted comment unless its something you absolutely agree with. I might lack tact, (which is hard to convey in text), but that doesn't make answers I've submitted that were backed by cited facts only to be downvoted on trivial meta issues weren't 100% correct.

I personally think the downvoting feature is fine, just really overused by people with much more karma that it makes the website less enjoyable to visit, especially for new people. And sure, one of the things I love about this site is that there are legitimate gurus on here, but a lot of people take their ability to downvote to classic Dunning Kruger syndrome.

Perhaps a quarter point penalty for downvoting to stop spamming and for people to consider the worthiness of a downvote or ignore. After all, Karma is how you treat others, and constantly negging them with no explanation isn't very kind at all especially for the majority of the people on this site that just want to learn.