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Why do downvotes grant points instead of upvotes?

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I took a look at the little arrow that says "points" in the board display, and for some reason, despite them being represented with an up arrow (implying it's based off upvotes), the number next to it actually coincides with how many downvotes a post has received instead of upvotes for some reason. Is this an error?
It changes. If the main post of the thread has been downvoted to the point where the score is in minus digits, the icon changes from an upwards facing arrow to a downwards facing one. If the post at 0 upvotes or higher, an upwards facing arrow is displayed.

The way the upvote/downvote system works is somewhat different to some other websites; there aren't separate upvote and downvote counts per post, only one big count which is effected by both.
DeepFriedBurger is correct here. I might be able to give more information though because I programmed the feature:

Upvotes grant +1 to the overall score whereas downvotes is -1. A post's points start off at 0, unlike sites like Reddit where it starts off at 1. However it is important to know there are anti-manipulation rules in place where if the site detects you're trying to vote manipulate or downvote/upvote bomb, your votes will be cast but not shown anywhere.

If someone downvotes at 0, it will go into the negatives. We represent this on board listings by showing a down arrow. If it gets upvoted to the positives, it will show an up arrow on the board listing.

If 5 people downvote and 3 people upvote, a post will be at -2. It doesn't currently give an indication of how many total votes there are however. This is by design as it helps keep voting more anonymous in a smaller community, however in a future update we will be showing the percent of upvotes on a post (i.e. 3 upvotes of 8 total votes = 37% upvoted)

Your overall post score is then added up together and that is your karma score (shown on your profile) is a mix of all your points you collected. Your profile has a lower limit of 0, so if your collective post score is below 0, we will show 0 on your profile.

I hope that clears things up, let me know if you need any more information.