(Please ignore my answer if this is about voting behavior on Meta, I understand your question as pertaining to the main Quantitative Finance SE site)
I like the idea to be more mindful about "rewarding" content of value. But I disagree that questions or answers should be upvoted just for "merit". If I were a teacher I would not give a student a passing grade just for ink usage if he/she otherwise completely lacked knowledge.
And I disagree that the biggest value of this site lies in the voting mechanism. (which I understood you tried to infer). For me the biggest value is a gathering place that is recognized and regarded to contain value. So, generally I do not have an issue to downvote and ignore content that does not, according to my own impression, belong on this site. When I look for input to a problem and search on this site I do not care how many upvotes a question or answer has, I look at whether the question or answer addresses my particular problem.
There are tons of new questions in the past 1 year that I would not characterize as quantitative in nature and hence should not belong here. Examples are all mentioned in the Q&A but more specifically about basic data gathering, technical (layman) indicators, asking to solve homework/assignments, asking for strategy ideas. All the above have merit, at least to the asker and maybe a handful of others and yet I would actually strongly argue to downvote, not upvote such content because it otherwise suggests this to be a site to discuss grandma's backtests and how to download bar data from Yahoo.
My own motivation in participating here originates from the desire to keep my mind sharp by keeping current and up-to-date on various topics that I may otherwise not get in touch with. I also use it as a repository of ideas that may pop up again in the future. Lastly, I think way too little knowledge is passed on to others in this field because of the highly commercial and competitive nature of this industry. I wish to participate in passing on the limited knowledge I gathered in my career so far and show my appreciation to some excellent mentors I was blessed to have worked for.
It is just my own take but I also see your point and appreciate your reminder to upvote valuable, targeted content.