@rfusca I heard about that on NPR...I find it an interesting ruling.

@Caleb I don't know about downvoting on meta. What happens with that?

@AffableGeek they are meaningless and signify agreement or disagreement. (basically don't sweat meta downvotes)

Ok, whew. I thought that was the case, but that makes me feel better. I feel really petty that I care about my rep here, but I noticed it didn't go down. And, more importantly, its totally okay that the proposal didn't fly - just looking for ways to clear things up around here..

@AffableGeek definitely. votes on meta don't matter for that very reason, to encourage spitballing and throwing ideas around. If its a good one upvote, if its a bad one downvote...

Dowvotes can happen on very valueble content, it just shows community concesus on agreement/disagreement etc. Your post brought up valuable issues to be raised, it wasn't a bad thing to do. On main sites you aren't supposed to vote on whether you agree or disagree with something, votes should reflect quality and usefulness and things like that.

I just wanted to make sure you knew about that difference.

Some really good participants on the SO meta often get downvoted off the map, not because it was a bad post, just because people voted no on proposals.

The one answer for yes and another for no is not a very useful format on meta.

You can pose an action in a meta post, then people can up/downvote the main post for votes and post answers with their reasons (like i did on yours) or you can pose a PROBLEM in the main post, then pose a solution in an answer and people can vote on both the problem and the proposed solution(s) separately.

But those aren't hard and fast formats either, it's kind of free-form.

And in the end votes mean whatever the heck the people who cast them what them to mean. Except we can't read their minds so they don't mean much.

Also on meta, they don't hurt your rep. You don't earn/loose rep on meta, your rep on meta is always one-way imported from the main site.