What you said is of course correct, but what I'm saying is that while the concept of a down vote button is useful, people end up using it in the fashion I descr

What you said is of course correct, but what I'm saying is that while the concept of a down vote button is useful, people end up using it in the fashion I described because of its convenience. Maybe merging them isn't the best idea, but changing it to mimic the flag button (i.e. moving it and requiring a reason to be specified before submission) would probably fix this issue, I'd wager.