[r_smart]

I think this is what dang means when he talks about building the technology to make the site YC wants. Users will use the features to get the results they want, often against the intentions of the site creators. reddit and the ongoing battle against 'downvote isn't for disagreement' in every sub is a good example of this. What mods want it used for is different from what users want to use it for, and obviously the users win.

Taking away the downvote button might seem like it would fix the problem, but as you point out, it would probably just shift the site behavior so that people use different features (flagging) to achieve the same result.