Let’s remember that score is not money, and many people actually do not care if reputation is reduced by automated means (as opposed to someone’s view on their acting). Score is just a raw signal to a participant on whether they did good or not. It never was a “win all the score non-decreasingly” game. If you spend 30% of your 10k on downvotes, it is still credible 7k. And if you gain 10k and see 3k problems, then these are community problems indeed.
My guess is that downvoting costs score only to weed out low-score inexperienced accounts from emotional voting or manipulation. No effort no score. No score no downvotes. –> no effortless misbehavior. That’s it.
Let’s remember that score is not money, and many people actually do not care if reputation is reduced by automated means (as opposed to someone’s view on their acting). Score is just a raw signal to a participant on whether they did good or not. It never was a “win all the score non-decreasingly” game. If you spend 30% of your 10k on downvotes, it is still credible 7k. And if you gain 10k and see 3k problems, then these are community problems indeed.
My guess is that downvoting costs score only to weed out low-score inexperienced accounts from emotional voting or manipulation. No effort no score. No score no downvotes. –> no effortless misbehavior. That’s it.