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On down-voting an answer, the person who downvoted, loses 1 reputation point. This is a practice that has been started here to prevent misuse of the option to downvote.

However, no reputation is lost on down-voting a question. Why is there an anomaly like this? Shouldn't it be same: either no reputation loss at all on down-voting, or 1 reputation loss for down voting on both questions and answers?

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    $\begingroup$ This question belongs on the mother meta site, where the original debate took place. $\endgroup$
    – Qmechanic Mod
    Commented Sep 3, 2017 at 16:24
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    $\begingroup$ In particular see meta.stackexchange.com/q/7322/2509 and meta.stackexchange.com/q/42769/2509 for the summary of the debate. The blow-by-blow is a lot longer as the first was [status-planned] for many months before the latter was sprung on the users. Also there have been on-going complaints since the change, but they have been regularly and soundly shot down. $\endgroup$
    – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten Mod
    Commented Sep 3, 2017 at 16:40
  • $\begingroup$ In general I'd say it should be fine to ask things like this here - but in this case the reasons for the difference are well documented on mother meta, so there's probably not much more an answer can give you besides linking to the original discussion. $\endgroup$
    – David Z Mod
    Commented Sep 3, 2017 at 17:29
  • $\begingroup$ DavidZ and @Qmechanic thanks for the links. I understand that this has been raised several times in the Meta SE. I actually didn't check that site before asking here. Anyways, thanks for your attentions. $\endgroup$
    – Wrichik Basu
    Commented Sep 3, 2017 at 18:14
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    $\begingroup$ I think the reason of the SE to do this, is that asking questions is easy, answering them is hard. Thus, the company makes it hard to ask questions, and tries to make answers so fruitful as it is possible. The reputation is tuned on this way: if you want to ask a question, you have to be very careful. If you make answers, the risks are much lower and the "payment" is much higher. $\endgroup$
    – peterh
    Commented Sep 10, 2017 at 22:41
  • $\begingroup$ @peterh a good explanation. $\endgroup$
    – Wrichik Basu
    Commented Sep 11, 2017 at 9:45

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A trivial search on the mother meta unearths the post detailing the original proposal for this idea and its implementation:

The motivations are also well explained in the follow-up post Revisiting free downvotes on questions.

As a rule of thumb, whenever the "here" in "this practice has been started here" is the entirety of the Stack Exchange network ─ and particularly for key aspects of the core Q&A engine like this one ─ the place to check is the mother meta. Asking here, particularly for users with nontrivial experience on this meta, can sometimes look a bit along the lines of "please google this for me".

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