Well, for a change, these proposed fixes for the "downvoting problems" seem rather reserved. I certainly support the first one and don't have a real problem with the last one.

My first impression of your second item was that I'd implement it backward to what you propose. I see a problem with new users getting too many downvotes and I downvote nodes that have high reps but that are incorrect. But thinking further, I guess you are thinking that systematically downvoting a monk means downvoting even their high-rep nodes and that should cost you XP.

So I'd just modify your second item to "no XP gain for casting downvotes". Normally I'd be against such a change but I see that we have some immature individuals that have taken to downvoting amazingly stupidly and are continuing to do so. (If jcwren fixes the stats page, then this might be easier to notice.) I'm (somewhat) happy that the victims of this have not flooded us with complaints about the problem, but that may mean that many aren't aware of the extent of this childish behavior. I'm aware of two specific cases that are rather alarming, appearing to involve the concerted effort of at least 10 "users" (perhaps all run by the same person) systematically targetting the same person over the course of weeks, downvoting all nodes by that person. I've ask vroom to look into this again (last time he looked he wasn't able to find any smoking guns).

Another minor change I've been getting to like would be "no loss of XP if you have no XP", specifically to address the well-meaning newbie whose first node shows their newbieness and attracts a bunch of downvotes.

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")