> 50 reputation is only 5 upvotes

On answers you get 10 for upvotes, on questions you only get 5. Then you can also get 2 at a time by making edits to others' questions/answers to improve them (this only works up to some limit, you stop getting the bonus past that).

It encourages "farming" in my opinion. I'm sure it's a net positive (maybe) and keeps spam down but... it's weird. They want you to contribute in a certain way before you can contribute in the way that you're most likely to encounter (randomly landing on a question from Google during the middle of a busy day, drop a quick note, try to move on, etc.)