Hi Christian, thx for commenting!

We want to allow "mediocre" people (some of which have an unrealized potential to be excellent) that want to learn from excellent people (I hope you agree).

To some extend yes, buat we don't want eternal September either. There concern about the average IQ that reported in the LW census dropping over time.

I'm not that concerned about average IQ. The crucial questions here are what is the purpose you see in LW and how you envision its future. If you want LW to be an elitist discussion forum for high-IQ people comfortable with a relatively aggressive / competitive environment, then it makes sense for you to use downvotes relatively liberally.

I think that the greatest potential value in LW lies elsewhere. I think LW can become a community and a cultural movement that promotes rationality and humanist values. A movement that has the power to steer history into a direction more of our liking. If you accept this vision, then you should be aiming at a much broader group (while making sure the widening circle doesn't water down our spirit and values). I envision LW as a place where people come to connect to other people that share similar worldview and values, not necessarily all of them being in the top IQ percentile. The "spiritual leadership" of the movement should consist predominantly of highly intelligent people that everyone can learn from, but it is not a necessary requirement for every member.

If we would have less downvotes in general then every single downvote would create a much stronger negative signal than it does at the moment.

This effect is only significant for people who spend sufficient time on the forum to get used to the "downvote background". Moreover, I think it is far from strong enough to cancel the reduction in downvotes.