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If I downvote an answer there is a -1 reputation change. Even though, downvotes and upvotes are supposed to be anonymous. There is a slight chance that user might visit my profile and can see my -1 reputation change from my profile.

PS: I couldn't find any answer that I could downvote, but hopefully you all get my point.

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    $\begingroup$ So... What is your question? $\endgroup$
    – BioPhysicist
    Dec 22 '20 at 13:53
  • $\begingroup$ @Biophysicst The question is that it makes downvotes pseudo anonymous and we should do something to change it. $\endgroup$
    – Danny LeBeau
    Dec 22 '20 at 18:23
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Only you can see the -1s that come from downvoting. If I look at your reputation history the SE hides the -1s from downvoting so I cannot see them.

In principle some careful observation could detect that there had been a -1. For example if I happened to note that your reputation was 2000 yesterday, and you downvoted in the period since then, I could tally up the changes I can see since yesterday and I would find there was a discrepancy of -1. In practice this is unlikely to happen unless possibly you were actively stalking someone.

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    $\begingroup$ And even if you notice they downvoted, you can't see where they downvoted. $\endgroup$
    – Glorfindel
    Dec 22 '20 at 6:46
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    $\begingroup$ If you're stalking as suggested by the answer, then you're sure they down-voted you! :) @Glorfindel $\endgroup$
    – Brick
    Dec 22 '20 at 16:18
  • $\begingroup$ In addition to that I encourage people to explain their downvote in a comment. For me there is no point in anonymous downvotes, doesn't improve anything. $\endgroup$
    – Bernhard
    Dec 22 '20 at 16:31
  • $\begingroup$ Carefully watching user profiles, possibly by some automatized way, would have some chance. Only the recently active users of the site would need regular reload. It would require programming and using some anonimization (tor) to hide from the SE defenses. I think this could give a good estimation, who voted an answer down, but I think the work is too much and the result is small. I think it might be useful to detect tag-specific question mass-downvoters. I did not see that on the PSE, but I think there is a lot on the SO. $\endgroup$
    – peterh
    Dec 22 '20 at 17:06
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    $\begingroup$ There's little point in carefully tracking reputation, as the total number of downvotes you've given is displayed publicly on your profile. It's only which post the downvote was on that is private. $\endgroup$
    – Chris Mod
    Dec 22 '20 at 21:15
  • $\begingroup$ The leaderboard leaks some information (as it includes the (total) reputation points change during the current week (for 5 or more votes)). A -1 is likely due a single downvoted answer (less likely is some combination of reputation points changes). $\endgroup$
    – Peter Mortensen
    Dec 29 '20 at 2:02

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