I am not a native English speaker. I am a Greek speaker, and there is no equivalent to the gender-neutral "they", you have to choose "he" or "she" and "he" is the most usual choice. So, here I let my native-tongued thinking interfere with the ideal English interpretation of what I had to say. And, I did not read your username :)
Conjecture: a downvote can also mean "does not add to the discussion", where 'the discussion' is the original topic.
Counterpoint: I see many threads that get off-topic from the original post, and yet downvotes for them seem…random. Some off-topic sub-threads become lengthy and lively.
