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Hi,

I am wondering why do my reputation points go down if I downvote someone else's post?

Thank you for your time.

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This happens because your down vote will remove 2 rep from that user. You lose 1 rep as well to prevent you from gaming the system. We couldn't let you go around taking rep away from others without making you consider if it's really worth it, could we?

If you can't justify the small loss to express your opinion on the particular post, then there's no need to down vote. If other people feel more strongly than you, they'll take care of it.

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  • 1
    This is a wonderfully great idea. Doing it this way keeps a general atmosphere of 'positiveness' alive throughout the site, whereas truly horrible answers go negative. nice one SO. – cmroanirgo Dec 18 '12 at 19:25
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    I don't know if I agree. If an answer clearly is not related to the OP's ? or is wrong, it should get a down vote. Why punish the person when they are doing the right thing? Also are people really dishonest enough to just go around down voting stuff? Couldn't such behavior be detected and then the user be warned/banned as a result? – Andy Arismendi Apr 16 '13 at 3:41
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    If more number of people are downvoting a question, then it should be good if the reputations are awarded back. – Arun A K Apr 17 '13 at 7:10
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    I wish i could upvote Arun A K's comment to a million. – nicholaswmin Jun 13 '13 at 13:31
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    I agree that if enough people downvote an answer then the -1 rep should be awarded back. This isn't a big deal to established users, but this discourages newbies from voting something down. – swooby Feb 13 '14 at 1:32
  • Thank god Comment does not have down-vote. Otherwise it should also punish the user. – mujaffars Sep 11 '15 at 12:16
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    I do not agree! In the long run this would facilitate the herd behavior to take place. I would not downvote any post from now on. – petrica.martinescu Mar 24 '17 at 13:01
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    This is not a game between asker and down voter. It should have a purpose of protecting down voting points of other users when is not necessary (like anti-fraud). So, in my opinion it should not decrease point from down voter at certain conditions as like it is not a fraud. – kamaci Jun 4 '17 at 12:35
  • @ArunAK, when that user removes their post your reputation is rewarded back, which is nearly the same. – Chris Farr Apr 13 '18 at 18:56
  • @ArunAK I consider it more fair for the downvoter to lose 2 points and the owner of the post to lose one point. Once downvoted, it is difficult to recover if the subject is special hence less audience visits it. In such cases it is not rare for a downvote to be the result of a downvoter's incompetence on the subject. – raratiru Jan 22 '19 at 1:37
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    So, what is the point of earning down-vote privilege. It's contradictory. It trusts me after that min reputation (to downvote) or it still doesn't trust me? – Rahul R. Aug 22 '19 at 20:13
  • Or better, increase the reputation required to down-vote. – Rahul R. Aug 26 '19 at 10:52
  • is it always -1 rep ? – Istiaque Ahmed Jan 11 at 20:53
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    I've come across a question with 350+ upvotes, and 3 answers with flat out incorrect content. None of the incorrect answers had downvotes, I'm guessing cause no-one wanted to loose rep until I came along. – run_the_race Jun 22 at 10:44
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    I lost a point for down-voting a question posted as an answer that was essentially "I'm having this problem too, did you find an answer?" Getting closer to only searching for answers if I don't find them elsewhere on the web; at this point I'm done participating. – Adrian M. Jun 30 at 1:47

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