Hi meme... lol ... (long name but it works bc I remember you) ;)
I understand completely about your feelings. I have had 2 downvotes myself. One was because I put a post in the comment section and a bigger player thought I was trying to spam her friend (which I wasn't of course) and the other was when I used a wrong tag.
Here is my advice.
#1 Never let one incident get you down. If you did something wrong, it is ok. Just learn from the mistake and move forward. This also applies in life too.
#2 Yes, if you want to try to clear your name (whether it comes off of your record or not), then you should reach out to the person who downvoted you. I suggest in these situations that you realize that the person was doing it for a reason and trying to send you a message. If you get the message, and won't do it again, then I always believe in contacting the person and telling them this. Just be honest. You can ask him if it is possible if he could remove it, but you can also tell him you want him to know what you have learned from it. (sometimes you can make a friend this way)
#3 As far as worrying about pissing him off, it depends on the person and what type of person you think he is. If he is someone like me that is approachable, then by all means ask in a respectful way to discuss it. If you don't think he is approachable, you can ask politely if he would "mind" discussing the issue with you. If he says "no" then move on. Of course yes proceed. I don't know of too many people that would get pissed off if you ask them if they would "mind" discussing something with you.
#4 I don't know about the rule on that, my guess it is history.
As far as your reputation, I completely agree it is a great metric to care about. I can help you to build your reputation and would be happy to work with you one on one if you want to message me in discord. If you are not on discord, let me know and I will send you a link. My username is davemccoy#2479.
There are many things you can do to improve your reputation score and I will be happy to show you how to do it right. Obviously it was a small setback, but honestly if you learned from it and move forward it will be a good thing. If I end up helping you to get to 45 in 2 or 3 weeks, then it was a good thing that you learned a lesson early.
Also I want to tell you that you are doing the right thing in asking questions. There are many people here that would love to help you. The way this works is you want your friends to get bigger. Its how you get bigger too. So because you did the right thing and asked for help here, I am willing to give you any advice I may have to help you.
As far as notice the comments, I will say sometimes its a challenge. But I try :) ...
I want to get to all of them and I want to help you to succeed and understand. Out of all of the lessons I've learned here and putting together all the things I've dealt with, I would say on a scale of 1 to 100 (1 being bad)... this problem you are having and the impact on your future here is so small it barely makes it to the 1 level. If you learn and go foward, you will have lost maybe a day or two of your time to recover it You seem relative young, so a day or two of going sideways (but learning in the process), is well worth the price to do it better in the future.
I firmly believe anyone can succeed here, and I will do my best to help you be one of them. So let me know if you have discord, if not I will send you the link and help you with anything you want!
Hi Dave :) sorry for the late reply. Life happened LOL. Was out of steem for 4 days. Really appreciate your advice. The downvote did bother me initially but I realized I should let it go and improve. I'm sure it can happen to anyone here. What you're doing here is great and I just want to say THANK YOU. I will look for you in discord :) see you there.
That is very good to hear. I was hoping that you would react that way. I could see it bothered you but I also know that it is completely irrelevant in the big scheme, because if you do this right you can get that back plus so much more. Good job!!!
Also I hope you do get me on discord because I can give you specific advice that can help you improve other aspects of your game here.
Btw, I understand life happens.. lol.. I will be here long term so we will be teammates whenever you have the time :)