I’m not sure why this wasn’t the approach. Why would you not want a boost, whatever it really does, when you upvote something? Or vise versa, boost but not upvote? It seems they both have similar or the same objectives, so just make the upvote button (that everyone uses for some positive reason) do it all.

I’m in favor of removing a visible number for reputation/votes and put in a vague ranking system like lots of forums had/have that only shows how active a person is in delivering discussion that’s appreciated. Remove downvote effects and just have them a visual on the posts themselves.