I am new here, don't know much about voting, rewards, or coding, but seems to me that the coding could be changed, pending community support, to change how downvotes work?

It seems to me downvoting someone into oblivion is not the point of enabling the down vote function. It was a tool intended to quash malicious content for sure, but not for punative retribution.

Here is what I am suggesting, love to hear your thoughts.
What if downvotes cost the person casting the downvote something, like a stake of their own reputation, or SBD, or something, like what if you only had one per day, and if you used it, there was a commision that voted on whether the content was malicious or not, deserving a down vote, or not.

You could code a means of annonymity into the voting, review, process.

So you down vote me, and it costs me $100.00, or whatever. I "appeal". It goes to a randomly selected group of Steemians, and they can review the material for themselves, and vote to either affirm my original post was "malicious, and deserving of down vote" or they can "overturn the down vote and loss of rewards".

The system could even have a cost to the down voter if they are overturned, like lost SBD or SP, or Reputation.

It could happen with annonymity if coders allowed.

Thoughts?

I am not a coder, I have no idea, maybe there are some unforseen complications with this sugggestion.