Facebook eliminated the dislike for a reason.
My personal experience is just wanting to quit after a question gets to -3 for reasons unknown.
Downvoting of a question is an inherently negative process and an even more negative experience for the questioner.
Requesting clarification is a natural, positive act.
Solution: A simple "?" button instead of "v" and a simple counter for the "?" clicks
Well... if you want clarifications you can use comments for that.
Speaking for myself I downvote questions mostly because I believe they are inappropriate - poor or no prior research, easy duplicates of another question already posted, poor typesetting, downright silly. I downvote answers because at least some elements are incorrect. In both cases I want to make it clear that I disagree with something in the contents of the post.
Unfortunately, there are some who think that posting a question is easy: posting a bad question is easy, but posting good question is hard given the immense backlog of questions already on the site. I’m not surprised when some questions accumulate downvotes as I often recognize the symptoms I mentioned above. Having 5 questions marks at the end of an question is the same as scoring -5.
Likewise I upvote answers and questions because I think the contents brings value to the site - well researched, well formulated, and other such positive reasons. When questions score “big”, I also often recognize the symptoms that make them good.
I do not want all questions or answers to be equal, because I don’t think they are all necessarily equal, and the proxy for that is the score on the question or the answer.
Maybe, just maybe, if some people were a little more patient and could afford the time to do basic due diligence on their questions (and sometimes on answers), there would be fewer downvotes overall, but I doubt this will happen.
As I can understand from your question, you seem to say that "replace the downvote button with a '?' button". But that wouldn't really make any difference, except not showing a negative score. Practically, the downvotes would now be substituted by "?"s.
And if you are proposing that we need to provide a feedback after we click on that "?", then honestly, if I would have to write the reason for every downvote I cast, I would probably cast lesser downvotes, which is not at all healthy for the site. It discourages downvoting, and that's why it doesn't seem appropriate. And anyways, if anyone wants to, willingly, acknowledge and explain their downvote, they can comment on the post. Making it compulsory is not at all the right way to go.
And downvotes are far more effective in conveying the fact (to the OP) that the post has some issues with it. I don't think any of the help-vampires would take "?" seriously. So, all in all, it isn't a good idea.
If you get a few downvotes on any of your post, first check the help center tomdecide that whether your question/answer is even on-topic/acceptable (respectively) on this site. If not, the downvotes are completely justified. If it's on topic/acceptable (but it was still downvoted), then ask for the clarification from the downvoter in the comments and act accordingly to improve upon your post. At last, if you don't get any response, try asking about it in the chat and request for feedback. And at the end of the day, keep in mind that these are, after all, internet points and they are there just to indicate that someone thinks that there's something wrong with your post. There's no reason to take them personally :-)
I think that cast a downvote is just feedback about the question.
Now, in my view/opinion in some of these sites Stack Exchange a post can receive such quantity of downvotes in a small lapse of time that I don't understand. I don't understand if it is useful for some person (even the situation is that maybe there were downvotes but not feedback in comments about the post).
In my view/opinion also is important to consider the impact for the account of the OP, if he/she was asking with good faith/intention (as usual) a bad or poor post. I (mean) am evoking the situation that I believe that is true: that there is a statistic about upvotes and downvotes that I need to consider for my account, because if I edit bad posts and get many downvotes this maybe can to have consequences*. And yes, I have fear.
In other words, I think that is right cast downvotes because I think that it is a need, but in certain circumstances can be good to limit the number of downvotes per post, and to consider how many downvotes can get a New Contributor in his/her first few posts (in particular the first post, after the first few minutes/hours that was published).
In my view, a simple counter for the "?" clicks, after that certain number of downvotes were casted can be useful and interesting to modulate some situations or circumstances.
