You express concern about the increasing number of downvotes, particularly about the points where site-wide downvotes literally outnumbered the upvotes.

Back when that first turnover occurred, concern was exactly the opposite of what I felt: That was the first time in years that I felt the site was actually heading on the right track. Not that I think that lots of downvotes is good, or that having content that was attracting downvotes is particularly commendable, but the fact that, possibly for the first time since we got out of private beta, the aggregate voting actually reflected the quality of the site.

See, before then, we were receiving a lot of voting based on partisan lines; people upvoting content that they agreed with, not because it was particularly well-written, just because it was "right". A lot of that was blatant copy-paste, or shallow regurgitations of the same, or even just flat unsubstantiated assertions, often times written so poorly as to be barely intelligible. Basically, posts of questionable quality that just encouraged an echo-chamber effect.

Over the next year or so, even though we still hadn't really been attracting too many high-quality posts, the low-quality posts were also not being particularly encouraged; so far as graduation is concerned, this is a huge advantage over the earlier state of the site. And since the last year or so, when post quality had shown a marked improvement, the voting also reflects that.

As for your impression that users tend to dismiss downvotes because they're so common, that's not my impression at all. Downvotes are a form of criticism, and many users just aren't open to criticism at all when it concerns their deep-held religious beliefs. You can see with new users as well as established users — and it is hardly unique to Islam.SE — that a downvote is often taken as a direct attack on their Truth rather than, as intended, a community judgement on the usefulness (distinct from Truthfulness) of the post.

Counter-intuitively, rather than dismissing them as you suggest, many users likely take such downvotes, and even critical comments, as encouragement not to improve their behaviour and just keep doing what they've been doing, choosing to see it as an unfair attack on their Truth rather than heed whatever actual criticism was provided (see also the Backfire Effect).

You express concern about the increasing number of downvotes, particularly about the points where site-wide downvotes literally outnumbered the upvotes.

Back when that first turnover occurred, concern was exactly the opposite of what I felt: That was the first time in years that I felt the site was actually heading on the right track. Not that I think that lots of downvotes is good, or that having content that was attracting downvotes is particularly commendable, but the fact that, possibly for the first time since we got out of private beta, the aggregate voting actually reflected the quality of the site.

See, before then, we were receiving a lot of voting based on partisan lines; people upvoting content that they agreed with, not because it was particularly well-written, just because it was "right". A lot of that was blatant copy-paste, or shallow regurgitations of the same, or even just flat unsubstantiated assertions, often times written so poorly as to be barely intelligible. Basically, posts of questionable quality that just encouraged an echo-chamber effect.

Over the next year or so, even though we still hadn't really been attracting too many high-quality posts, the low-quality posts were also not being particularly encouraged; so far as graduation is concerned, this is a huge advantage over the earlier state of the site. And since the last year or so, when post quality had shown a marked improvement, the voting also reflects that.

As for your impression that users tend to dismiss downvotes because they're so common, that's not my impression at all. Downvotes are a form of criticism, and many users just aren't open to criticism at all when it concerns their deep-held religious beliefs. You can see with new users as well as established users — and it is hardly unique to Islam.SE — that a downvote is often taken as a direct attack on their Truth rather than, as intended, a community judgement on the usefulness (distinct from Truthfulness) of the post.

Counter-intuitively, rather than dismissing them as you suggest, many users likely take such downvotes, and even critical comments, as encouragement not to improve their behaviour and just keep doing what they've been doing, choosing to see it as an unfair attack on their Truth rather than heed whatever actual criticism was provided (see also the Backfire Effect).

You express concern about the increasing number of downvotes, particularly about the points where site-wide downvotes literally outnumbered the upvotes.

Back when that first turnover occurred, concern was exactly the opposite of what I felt: That was the first time in years that I felt the site was actually heading on the right track. Not that I think that lots of downvotes is good, or that having content that was attracting downvotes is particularly commendable, but the fact that, possibly for the first time since we got out of private beta, the aggregate voting actually reflected the quality of the site.

See, before then, we were receiving a lot of voting based on partisan lines; people upvoting content that they agreed with, not because it was particularly well-written, just because it was "right". A lot of that was blatant copy-paste, or shallow regurgitations of the same, or even just flat unsubstantiated assertions. Basically, posts of questionable quality that just encouraged an echo-chamber effect.

Over the next year or so, even though we still hadn't really been attracting too many high-quality posts, the low-quality posts were also not being particularly encouraged; so far as graduation is concerned, this is a huge advantage over the earlier state of the site. And since the last year or so, when post quality had shown a marked improvement, the voting also reflects that.

As for your impression that users tend to dismiss downvotes because they're so common, that's not my impression at all. Downvotes are a form of criticism, and many users just aren't open to criticism at all when it concerns their deep-held religious beliefs; you can see this with new users as well as established users, and it is hardly unique to Islam.SE. Counter-intuitively, many users are likely to take downvotes, or even critical comments, as encouragement to keep doing what they've been doing, choosing to see it as an unfair attack on their beliefs rather than heed whatever actual criticism was provided (see also the Backfire Effect).

You express concern about the increasing number of downvotes, particularly about the points where site-wide downvotes literally outnumbered the upvotes.

Back when that first turnover occurred, concern was exactly the opposite of what I felt: That was the first time in years that I felt the site was actually heading on the right track. Not that I think that lots of downvotes is good, or that having content that was attracting downvotes is particularly commendable, but the fact that, possibly for the first time since we got out of private beta, the aggregate voting actually reflected the quality of the site.

See, before then, we were receiving a lot of voting based on partisan lines; people upvoting content that they agreed with, not because it was particularly well-written, just because it was "right". A lot of that was blatant copy-paste, or shallow regurgitations of the same, or even just flat unsubstantiated assertions, often times written so poorly as to be barely intelligible. Basically, posts of questionable quality that just encouraged an echo-chamber effect.

Over the next year or so, even though we still hadn't really been attracting too many high-quality posts, the low-quality posts were also not being particularly encouraged; so far as graduation is concerned, this is a huge advantage over the earlier state of the site. And since the last year or so, when post quality had shown a marked improvement, the voting also reflects that.

As for your impression that users tend to dismiss downvotes because they're so common, that's not my impression at all. Downvotes are a form of criticism, and many users just aren't open to criticism at all when it concerns their deep-held religious beliefs. You can see with new users as well as established users — and it is hardly unique to Islam.SE — that a downvote is often taken as a direct attack on their Truth rather than, as intended, a community judgement on the usefulness (distinct from Truthfulness) of the post. 

Counter-intuitively, rather than dismissing them as you suggest, many users likely take such downvotes, and even critical comments, as encouragement not to improve their behaviour and just keep doing what they've been doing, choosing to see it as an unfair attack on their Truth rather than heed whatever actual criticism was provided (see also the Backfire Effect).