According to the help center:
When a single user continually votes (up or down) on many of your posts within a short period of time, the system considers these votes to be invalid and removes them. This could happen for a variety of reasons, such as a user finding a user's great answer and visiting all of their posts to upvote them, or a user getting into an argument with another user and downvoting their posts indiscriminately in revenge. No matter the cause, this sort of systematic targeted voting is not considered normal behavior and the system will not allow it.
The exact parameters are not public information since that would make circumventing the system rather easy. The article continues:
If such a voting pattern continues to happen between two users mutually or from one user towards another, or otherwise falls outside of normal voting patterns, moderators and/or developers may investigate the matter; intentionally voting merely to reduce or inflate another user's reputation is considered abuse.
To put it another way, downvoting a user rather than the content of posts is abusive. I investigated the votes you received and there is no pattern of targeted voting.
As to whether the downvoting is discouraging to new users, I certainly agree that it is. But I've also argued that downvotes tend to be more constructive than critical comments. Downvotes certainly sting. But they can be counterbalanced by upvotes. In fact, it takes just one upvote to make up for the lost reputation of five downvotes on an answer. So I'd definitely shrug off the occasional downvote.
But when you are getting many downvotes, it's probably time to listen to Oliver Cromwell:
I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.
For instance, there are two extant answers to: What is the difference between ζωὴ and ψυχὴ? One uses evidence from how the two words are translated across the New Testamant and quotes Rudolf Kittel. The other answer, looks at two passages in John and one in Genesis. For the purposes of determining the semantic differences between the two words, the first answer is clearly superior. The relative voting reflects that disparity.
When you get downvoted, it's best to first consider whether you might improve your answer. Reading over the comments and making the necessary edits is key there. Also, take a moment to read other answers to the same question and see if they have anything to teach you. If you still feel your arguments are solid, please don't take votes personally. Other people generally use the system the way it was designed: they vote up answers that are useful and downvote answers that are not.
