I know someone who got 19 downvotes (so far) on a good post. They're all puny, but it's still pretty discouraging to see that kind of ridiculousness. I get the point of downvotes and think they are absolutely needed when there are so many people abusing the system, but it's also become pretty easy to pop people that aren't worthy. Or as you said, if you're posting to a very particular community it's pretty unfair for someone outside of said community to decide the worth of the post. Unless of course you're abusing tags, but that's a separate issue. I see a problem now in that there are still bots downvoting posts that have been voted on by former bid bots, even though some of those accounts have switched to completely manual curation. I think I've gotten as many as 4 downvotes so far on one post, but seem to get at least a few on most of them anymore.