No, there aren't downvotes. If 20% of users really love something, and 80% hate it (assuming they only use flagging for spam) it will still keep making the top page.
The guidelines suggest that people flag for spam or off-topic:
> Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.
Some people (but not me) flag all Bitcoin articles. Other people appear to flag many of them.
Bitcoin is fascinating. Lots of the technical stuff is poorly understood. Lots of the economics stuff is poorly understood. Unfortunately most of the threads are more heat than light, so I understand why people do flag Bitcoin threads.
It's interesting that the flagging rights would be removed instead of being ignored.
I thought the flagging system used a scale of importance based on the users history. If you show good history of flagging, your action is more important. Same goes if you show poor history of flagging.
