I have lurked here for a while and have only recently began submitting stories and am starting to participate. My personal opinion is that people who haven't frequented the site enough to obtain the karma required to downvote (such as myself currently) do not understand the culture of the site enough to know what is that should stay vs. go. By reaching a certain level you are proving that you are working effectively on behalf of the community here and that your opinion should be taken more seriously. Just my take on it though.