I think down votes are essential for the community to self moderate as a whole against spammers and trolls... if used correctly. I doubt the down votes are going anywhere especially since the admins even took the time to improve on those by adding the down vote reason selection functionality not too long ago.

In addition, considering the complexity of the comments in a multi-tribe setting for discussion, down votes become ever more essential for the community to self govern from spammers and trolls. I guess the question we should ask ourselves is. How does one moderate a snap that has been posted into multiple tribes? Which chief and set of moderators should be assigned to the task? Should it be the teams from all tribes? Should it be the content poster? Or should it be the community? This is definitely a topic I feel is worthy of discussion.