Thanks for the feedback! I actually think that most of the downvotes are well-intentioned. To me, the problem is mostly in the way people perceive them. We can tell people not to take it personally until we're blue in the face, but it still feels personal to most people.

The other side to that, though, is that there needs to be some other incentive (like a second price auction style of mechanism) penalizing people for overvaluing a post and encouraging people to vote honestly. IMO, the last two years proved that you can't just disable downvotes - without any other changes - and expect that posts are going to be ranked in any sort of rational manner.