That's what I've always believed, but that exact proposal was shot down multiple times by the Meta community, to the tune of "We have the RIGHT [waving angry fist] to downvote whomever we want, whenever we want, without having to give an accounting for it." Someone said almost exactly that to me in one such conversation on Meta, minus the angry fist. He got a lot of upvotes on that response, too. That's when I concluded the core SO community actually values downvoting as a harassment tool, and doesn't want to lose that power. Any other use of DVs would fit in nicely with some simple accountability.
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That's what I've always believed, but that exact proposal was shot down multiple times by the Meta community, to the tune of "We have the RIGHT [waving angry fist] to downvote whomever we want, whenever we want, without having to give an accounting for it." Someone said almost exactly that to me in one such conversation on Meta, minus the angry fist. He got a lot of upvotes on that response, too. That's when I concluded the core SO community actually values downvoting as a harassment tool, and doesn't want to lose that power. Any other use of DVs would fit in nicely with some simple accountability.