[krapp]

There are no qualifications for either upvotes or downvotes, as far as I'm aware. Pg has said that any reason up to and including mere disagreement is valid[0], and this seems to have been accepted in general, although many people here also disagree with it in practice[1].

There's really nothing to do but accept it. Asking for clarifications about downvotes, or complaining about them, will only lead to more of the same, and the staff finds meta discussions about site policy to be tedious and tends to kill them.

On the other hand, karma is practically useless so I wouldn't worry too much about losing it.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3760275

[rilita]

It's not useless because until you hit a certain karma value you cannot downvote. I encounter obnoxious people and attempt to respond reasonably to them; they downvote every single post I make but I obviously cannot do the same to the comments they make that are bad for the community. As a result those people gain karma for trashing whatever I say and no one else gets involved because they do not want to get involved in downvotes imo.