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I have read somewhere (I don't remember where) that the OPs lose a reputation if they down-vote a bad answer to their post.

Why should it be in this way?

A low-quality and sometimes incorrect answer deserves a down-vote. Why should the OP be punished too?

Perhaps you lose reputation if the answerer is a new contributor? Again, a bad answer deserves down-vote.

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    You lose a reputation point for downvoting an answer to any question. Are you asking why there isn't an exception in the case of downvoting answers to your own questions? Either way, you'd be better off asking on the site-wide Meta, as the voting system is the same on every Stack Exchange site and this isn't a Skeptics-specific issue. – F1Krazy Aug 10 at 13:36
  • I'm also guessing that this post was prompted by your question on Puzzling.SE, in which case it has nothing to do with Skeptics whatsoever. – F1Krazy Aug 10 at 13:48
  • Huh, I tried to migrate it to Stack Exchange Meta, but it seemed to just close it!? Reopened it here. – Oddthinking♦ Aug 11 at 7:59
  • It probably would have been closed as a duplicate there. – Oddthinking♦ Aug 11 at 8:00
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The theory behind giving downvotes costing you 1 rep point is based in the belief that you will be more thoughtful when doing it. This is probably true when you have low rep, but once you break 1000 or so, you stop caring. This is somewhat intentional, because if you've gained 1000+ rep, you probably understand site guidelines well enough that deciding on a proper downvote comes quickly. If your downvote is not worth the 1 rep, then the system is working.

All SE sites operate on this scheme, so changing it is not in our capacity. You can check the network wide meta site, https://meta.stackexchange.com, for the numerous discussions on downvoting and see this is not a thing that will change.

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