There is no downvoting problem-- newbies who ask good questions badly and certain personalities are the only people I've ever seen complain about downvotes. In the former case, newbies need some feedback that they should put a little more effort into their part of the "learning to fish" exercise-- and a downvote won't kill them. Why when I first got to the Monastery I posted a snide answer that I hoped would help a Seeker understand the problem they were having writing a hand-rolled CGI form parser. Not only did I get downvotes, but Merlyn was rather unkind about it in the Catbox. I'm still here, having learned my lesson about providing in assistance in joining the Cargo Cult. As for personalities who can't stand to have people take swipes at them in public-- well, they could stop being public figures. It's part of the price you pay for being well-known. I mean, compare a downvote to having a picture of yourself in the Enquirer. It's laughably unimportant. Consequently, nothing should be done to discourage downvotes in the least bit, especially since they are a necessary part of the auto-reap consideration process.

As zdog noted in the recent thread discussing showing a ++/-- vote totals (seemingly a popular notion given that my root node in that thread is my highest rep node right now), the direction of votes is not recorded in the version of the Everything Engine that PM uses. So any suggestions to show that information require vroom to make some choices about how to display history and to import code to do that at all.

Finally, I do like the idea of being able to cast a Null vote. Maybe it should cost two or five votes though. I don't know what good it does you or the node to know what its rep is, but I can see where it might be interesting/amusing... especially if it's one of those nodes that doesn't appear in Best Nodes or Worst Nodes. The only time I really want to know what a node's rep is is before I vote on it, so that I don't push some perfectly decent link to a stonehenge.com article or a link to the FAQ into the top ten nodes of all time list. Those are excellent, informative nodes, but when you compare XP benefit to the poster with the effort expended by the poster, they often don't compare favorably. They are usually the first response-- and because I think most people browse "newest first" they tend to get more votes simply based on when they were posted, not the overall quality of the node. So yes, null votes would be a nice feature, but I'm not sure I get what benefit it would provide.