People should not be discouraged from actively reading older posts and voting on them. Quite the opposite.

My feeling is that people should be able to reply to older posts. And I think upvoting helps bring attention to good comments and posts. I'm inclined to think that there's enough downvoting in some modest number of months to give an adequate signal.

Voiceofra did over 800 downvotes to just three posters. I'm sick of dealing with this stuff. I want it to not happen. 5 downvotes per week on old posts doesn't seem like a really onerous restrictions, but I don't downvote a tremendous amount, so I might be typical-minding things.

5 downvotes per week is well below trouble, I think. 15 starts looking like karma-vampirism to me if someone is doing a vendetta.

Some people get dispirited if their karma is dropping, especially if there's no apparent reason for it.