I'll be honest, I don't necessarily understand what gets flagged sometimes. I wrote a blog post a while back that got flagged when submitted, and sure, maybe there was too much Twitter discourse already when I submitted it, but I didn't think there was anything objectionable enough to have it flagged, instead of just allowed to sink gracefully off the front page of New. I don't have a problem with flagging in theory, but it would be nice to have a little more transparency, though, so I know how to correct in the future.

Downvotes, though, I have less issue with. They can sting, sure, but they're a signal from the community that "we do not want to have this conversation here." And that's fine! Not all communities need to have all conversations, and while moderators moderate, communities really do tend to define themselves. Moderators can say, for example, ducks are an allowed conversation topic, but downvotes from the community indicate that the community really does not want to discuss ducks. "What is permissable" versus "what is encouraged" are different things.

The biggest problem I have with downvotes is how they can be gamed. So long as that's dealt with reasonably, yeah, don't mind 'em so much.