Downvoting costs you, not much, but it does cost you. There are
discussions to increase the cost of a downvote on the issuer,
I'm wondering if the same should be done for upvotes as well. I
probably just set a lot of you on tilt, but give me a second to
hash out my reasoning.  I was recently discussing "pity
upvotes," where users apparently grant upvotes for no apparent
reason (somebody want to help me on the technical definition?).
After all, upvotes are free, and don't cost you anything.
Allegedly, there's a problem with pity upvotes where users
allegedly feel they can post anything and get some rep from it.
If this were the case, how would you suggest addressing it?  I'm
curious as to whether it should cost me to upvote a
question/answer. Not much, but something. That way I'm giving
away of piece of me in order to elevate a worthy-post higher in
the stack, both internally to a question, or externally on the
front page.  I'm not convinced there is a pity upvote problem,
but if there was, how many of these i