It's because here at Perlmonks, programming IS a team sport. :-) as opposed to your OpEd: Programming is not Team Sports. Each of us monks has a certain specialty, just like players on a team, and the synergy of that team input is what it's all about.

When you downvote someone, it's because they made a bad play. If you don't have that negative option, the play gets sloppy.

If you do have someone who downvotes you out of spite, just accept it as your karma, maybe you've been acting bad in your other life, and the spirits get on your case. Or, you could join the Monastery under a few other names, and go around upvoting yourself as compensation. :-)

Finally, isn't there something called "dog voting" where your voting priviledges are curtailed if your negative votes get too high? Why does the XP nodelet say that I have "dog" votes left?