I like the idea of a downvote that isn't associated with value. In that case, it's a good way to express disagreement without doing something which can be perceived as causing harm. But the action by itself without leaving a comment is tantamount to hand waving, or a mindless act of dismissal. I've been around for almost the entire life of the platform, actually looks like you've got me beat by about a month.

The original reason for the downvotes were reasonable, but then the folks at STINC soon learned that they couldn't control how or why people use the flag tool. This is when reward disputes were thrown in as kind of a catchall reason to get people to stop complaining, or to get them to stop hounding STINC to fix a problem that is unsolvable.

It will be interesting when facebook comes out with their Libra if they will also have downvotes associated with value. If they do, I think it will cause a level of discord that will make it noticeable enough to show why it's divisive and a bad idea in general. And the people on FB know each other IRL, can you imagine if that was implemented. Just wow. I'm starting to think that these two technologies should not have been married together the way they are. Time will tell I guess.