I'm going to humbly open for discussion a re-examination of the jail/down-vote dynamic.

There seems to be a disconnect in how down-votes are being used, their original purpose, and their current purpose.  

I'm still relatively new to the site, so bear with me if I make factual errors in summing up the situation.

1.  With down-votes capped at 10, it is really hard for them to have the effect of lowering a poster below the posting threshold, which I believe was the intended function.

2.  As a corollary to this, long-time posters (with high Helmet-stickers) can breach minor rules with a degree of impunity.  (at least it appears that way, I am not privy to behind the scenes operations)

3.  With Jail a new feature, down-votes are presumably now a de facto way of 'flagging' a potentially offensive post.  I'm not sure if this is intended or not.

4.  From what I see there is widespread mis-use of down-votes.  They are being used to show disagreement much more often than to mark a post as potentially in violation of site rules.  I'll offer up the Braxton at Graduation thread as an example.

Hopefully a discussion on this subject isn't at odds with the purpose and policies of the site.  

Thanks