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It may not be intended, but I'm pretty sure it's what it's used for. Plus intuitively, it's as if it is put there for that purpose, since there is also a "flag" action which seems more suited for marking spam/off-topic already.

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I don't have any supporting evidence, but it seems like the downvote has been increasingly used to disagree over the past several months.

I think it's fair to say that if most people upvote with things they agree with, then they will downvote things they disagree with.

It may even be a subconscious act.

I suppose someone out there disagrees with you.

As your score on this now perfectly demonstrates.

I agree. I've always thought the intention here was to use comments to disagree, and reserve down-voting for really poor comments that may not be constructive to the conversation. As another poster pointed out, getting down-voted does cause me re-think my comment, but I'd rather know why someone down-voted me.

Personally, I tend to avoid down-voting, even for egregious comments.

Personally, getting downvoted tends to make me rethink wanting to even bother to comment.

Exactly. It discourages participation through negative feedback. If you want to condition people to do a certain thing, like post thoughtful comments, then I think that's best achieved solely through positive reinforcement.

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