This is a quick and painless solution. But it may be worthwhile implementing one kind of weighted system where your vote carries different weight based on your activity, up votes, down votes etc.
So anyone can downvote, but if they've never posted anything or commented, it only counts as 0.01 votes or something as meaningless.
This way it can be implemented across the board and doesn't require individual rules or oversight or discriminate on an individual user basis.
Of course, such a system would require more effort and take time to implement. Then again, it's easy for me to sit here and say this when I'm not going to be doing any of the work, and in the end it may not even be worth it.
Just remove downvotes entirely. They serve no real functional purpose, only upvotes are needed.
(post is archived)