Today there have been a lot of questions by first time posters that were off-topic for this site, but were neither crank questions nor (obvious) homework. For example, there was a question about how to get into a math grad program from an electrical engineer, a question about what little o notation means, etc... All of these questions are off-topic, and were closed as such, usually with a polite comment directing the OP to a more appropriate site. However, each of these also received a down vote. I would ask that we cut a little slack for well-intentioned first time posters who obviously misunderstood the scope of this site (even if it is fairly well-stated in the FAQ) and just politely close the question and direct it to a more appropriate site. It is really the homework and crank questions (and the incomprehensible questions) that need to be discouraged with down votes. At least that is my opinion. Of course all are free to down vote as they see fit.

This is just a guess but I imagine downvoting is coming from users that don't have the ability to vote to close. These are also more likely to be users less-inclined to frequent meta.MO.

At least in the early days of MO, I recall moderators would give gentle e-mail notices to people who inappropriately downvoted.