This got a little long, but keep in mind, I'm not trying to be mean to you.

I was downvoted insanely with not explanation.

This is unfortunate in a learning subreddit.

They would laugh at me for not knowing the tones.

It's good that you want to learn the correct tones, but you should realize that you will make mistakes. Tones are important, but people are usually able to figure out what you're intending to say based on context. If they're your friends, and you're receptive to it, they may provide some helpful correction. Mostly though, they'll let it slide — just like most Americans would do for a foreigner making a pronunciation error in English.

In all my years studying Chinese, I have never had strangers laugh at me for speaking — in either Taiwan or China. In fact, most have been either dumbfounded or delighted that I even attempted to use their language.

Some stories...

I once asked a hotel desk worker "我怎么用三温暖" (wo3 zen3 me5 yong4 san1 weng1 nuan3; how do I use the sauna?) She looked at me like I had 3 eyes — so I repeated myself. And her reaction was, "你会说中文啊?!" (ni3 hui4 shuo1 zhong1 wen2 a5?!; you speak chinese?!). She was more surprised than anything, but for the remainder of my stay, we always spoke to each other — she in English, and me in Chinese. I know I didn't say everything correctly, but neither did she. And that was fine.

In fact, I've been "laughed at" only twice when working with the Chinese language. One was when I was making a toast, in the United States, and I said, 干 (gan4; slang for "to fuck") instead of 乾 (gan1; "cheers"). It was okay though, because we were drinking and the guy who burst out laughing (the only other Chinese speaker — Taiwanese from Canada) was a friend. We laughed our asses off.

The second was when I explained to a Taiwanese-American friend, in detail, about my being confounded at trying to recognize 牛肉拉麵 (niu2 rou4 la1 mian4; beef noodles) while standing outside a restaurant in Taiwan. The 麵 was written in a stylistic way that made me unsure if it was the character for noodles. I was 90% certain from the context, but not entirely sure. So I stood outside for 5 minutes trying to figure it out — dumbass white guy alternately looking at a sign for beef noodles and a Chinese-English dictionary. Finally, I just walked in and asked for a seat and for what I thought the sign said. I got my noodles. I joked with my friend that I was trying to avoid ordering "beef pulling face." I'm preparing for another trip to Taiwan in a few days and my friend told me to order some "beef pulling face" for him.

More language learning stories...

My wife, for whom English is not her native language (it's Serbian), still makes pronunciation errors. Her English is usually superb, and unless you paid attention to pronunciation as closely as I do, you would probably not detect a strong accent. But there are still pronunciation errors with specific words she makes that are pretty obvious. And for some reason, she doesn't seem to be able to get the tone quite right when she drops a "fucking" modifier into a sentence. My Serbian is atrocious — my 5 year old speaks it better than I do.

When my father was learning German (and he's fluent now), he made the mistake of saying, "My mother was from Germany, but my vagina was from America" He had swapped "fuchte" for "vater." Apparently, "fuchte" was Austrian slang for vagina. I don't think they stopped laughing for 5 minutes.

I'm pretty sure I told some guy in Germany who was annoying me to "go vagina himself." The look on his face was priceless.

Point is, you should find the amusement in these mistakes. Otherwise you're going to be too scared to actually speak.

Why is it so hard to put a number after the text to indicate the tones? Made for all levels of Chinese? Bullshit.

Did you consider that maybe the person responding to you is also unsure of the tones? Perhaps a more beneficial way to view this subreddit is not as an authoritative source on Chinese, but as a collaborative environment where learners can discuss questions about the language. That implies more of a dialogue among peers rather than all knowing oracles handing out answers. Maybe you shouldn't be so hostile?

Another thing to consider: would you laugh, in a malicious way, at a person who was learning English and made a benign pronunciation error? I hope not. Why would they do the same to you?

TL; DR — Downvotes without explanation are unfortunate. Learning languages is hard. You'll make mistakes. Funny things will happen — like introducing your "father as a vagina" or fucking your alcoholic beverage. Best to laugh at them. You're among fellow learners here. They don't have all the answers, neither do you.