I agree with you and many others about the negative voting feature. There is a link to turn off the voting feature. When you do that and you enter a post it does not ask the question nor does it show the votes. However, even when you choose this option it still keeps track of them on the forum pages. I wonder if the Webmaster could add to that feature so when you pick to not participate in the voting...it would make the votes invisible on all pages.
Just a suggestion. Hmmm. But then it wouldn't show the helpful votes either. Maybe if it just made the negative votes invisible lol. I'm not sure. It's probably easier to just remove the negative voting feature all together!