I guess you mean "genuine criticism" in the sense of the intro line from the old series The Critic: "It Stinks!". I think that intro line was meant to be ironic.

I meant it more in the sense of "downvoting a crappy node" versus "exercising a vendetta against a poster". In my opinion, there are plenty of reasons for downvoting out of genuine criticism:

• incorrect answer to a question
• boring or otherwise uninsightful meditation
• bad suggestions for changes to Perl Monks
• inappropriate language (profanity, personal attacks)
• trolls

In many of those cases, it's not even worth the time for a written reply -- so I guess in that sense, a downvote does just mean "It Stinks!"

N.B. I missed the $vtavg in the chance of losing XP in my first readthrough -- that does lessen the impact substantially and probably does away with the need for my suggestion #2.