Agreed on no downvotes for questions.

For answers, I would also do away with the downvote button, and offer multiple options instead, like: "does not answer the question", "misleading information", "off topic", "outdated", "i don't like the solution", ... .

That would still give SO the capability to sort answers based on some quality ranking algorithm and hopefully reduce the unwarranted downvoting.

PS, this line from the article perfectly captures how I perceive much of Stackoverflow over the past few years:

> “look how stupid that guy is, and look how clever I am pointing that out with my downvote!”