It specifically describes downvoting as being part of a bad attitude. Not sure I'm in agreement with that at all. So, to be perceived as having a great attitude, I'm supposed to love everything here 100%

Not quite. There is more on the fediverse than you could possibly vote on, up or down. Which means that the stuff you are voting on is the stuff you have curated in to your feeds, and decided needs interaction. And it's reasonable to say that if most of the stuff you are choosing to interact with is stuff that makes you hate vote it, then you're probably not carrying a positive attitude

Edit - And for what it's worth, you have a 100% attitude on my instance, because we have downvotes disabled! :)

in my experience, reputation doesn't really show up unless the user has a bad rep.... they're marked by a few caution signs

related post: https://piefed.social/post/234177

also... for reputation: from source 1 - "The ‘Rep’ column is their reputation. As you can see, some people have been downvoted thousands of times. They’re not going to change their ways, are they?" from source 2 - "People who get downvoted a lot end up with a ‘low reputation’ indicator next to their name. You’ll know it when you see it."

You keep saying "bad" but perhaps it's more like... "critical"?

That said, if you don't like something, why go to the trouble to rub someone's face in how you do not like it, rather than simply scroll down and move on with your life? Maybe even leave the community, block the OP, etc. - not liking something is not an ideal reason to downvote it, imho.

And the reason for that is that on the receiving end, someone getting a bunch of downvotes without anyone bothering go explain why, isn't a great feeling. It leaves them not knowing what it was that people disliked, and with the feeling that people are judging them but not before bothering to do a proper assessment. i.e. that the community is unfriendly towards them, maybe even full of people with a childish mindset.

I haven't even so much as glanced at your history so none of this is a judgement against you: I am just illustrating why a lot of people prefer to downvote responsibly, and therefore why someone might want to know what your "Attitude" score is, so that they can more properly pay attention or ignore when you interact with them - e.g. if you downvoted everything then someone receiving a downvote would not "mean" so much compared to someone receiving the literally only downvote that someone else has ever delivered.

When you don't have too many votes cast, it doesn't take much to cause a big swing. There is a section in the code where it doesn't actually calculate the attitude until after 3 votes are cast, but perhaps that should be increased.