Everything you said here is absolutely true. Something few understand is the psychological factors at play with the gamification on "social media". I could go into detail about the studies that have led giants like Facebook to resist putting a dislike button on their interface, and the extent to which negative interaction can discourage users even with a mountain of positive reinforcement, but it would probably fall on deaf ears.

This is something I've know intuitively somehow since I began here. It is why I started @freezepeach, and it's something so subtle, yet so powerful, that it's easy to overlook, but foolhardy to do so.

There is a reason for downvotes, and reward disagreement is one of them. Quantifying this into an objective guideline is nearly impossible on the current one-size-fits-all reward model, and for the time being we're going to have this somewhat broken system that kind of works but is inconsistent enough to scare away people who abhor uncertainty. I'm learning to live with the fact that not everyone will understand the far reaching effects that downvotes carry, and we're doomed to mediocrity until SMTs can separate reward pools for different niches, and allow the value of the content dictate the price.