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Question received no rep, but an answer mentioning the question received negative rep; why?

A while back, I asked the question Leading zeros in IPv4 address; is that a no-no by convention or standard?, which in hindsight could possibly have gone on another Stack Exchange, maybe Networking. However, it was not downvoted, moved, and ultimately received answers, themselves getting upvotes.

Some time later, I posted an answer to a similar question. I don't recall why I posted that answer, but I just noticed that I received negative reputation for the answer.

Why would that answer receive downvotes? I'm sure I would have preferred to list it as a comment, but I still don't have the comment privilege here on SuperUser.

Why downvotes with no comments to explain why it was downvoted?

I just went through the tour (potentially again), and looked at the on topic and off topic pages and don't understand.