RTFM: Display of Node Reputation

If you aren't seeing the "no significant downvotes" explanatory text, then that should mean that you already visited that page (because that is supposed to be the only place where this verbage can be disabled). Are you seeing the explanatory text and just "ignoring" it? Did you somehow manage to disable the explanatory text w/o going to the explanatory page? Did you visit the page but the explanation was not intelligible to you?

We can't improve things if we don't know how this system that was set up to prevent people from being confused failed you.

After you got confused, did you try to find the site documentation that covered the feature? Did you know that you can Super Search for "monk help" on "down vote" and get a very short list of nodes including the one I linked to? Is the site FAQ index (found via the "Need Help??" link near the top of every page) too hard to browse?