Vote down Blue posts?

Also, people not liking a blue post =/= the blue post being unimportant.

If people saw a voted down blue post, at least some would take that as a sign that they can ignore it.

As the Blue post would be "un-bury[able]" the post would always be visible. Furthermore, since it is a blue post it would more likely than not be an instance where, regardless of the up votes or down votes, the color would stay the same (not grey or bright). The number of up votes or down votes would be blind to the player base but monitored on Blizzard's end.

I fail to see how this is a bad idea.

You're referring to the use of the rating system to provide us feedback on what we're posting about, if I understand correctly. If we posted "Here's a new feature that's coming" you could vote up or down and let us know what you think about it.

It's not necessarily a bad idea, but it's definitely not useful. I'll tell you why:

A vote up or down, while useful to players in helping highlight or hide another player's post, is not useful to us in any way to determine why someone liked it or disliked it. It's those details that are helpful to us, especially regarding feedback on our posts. Simply saying /signed or +1 or clicking a vote button doesn't provide context. Replying to the post and providing your feedback or stance on something (in a constructive manner) can be useful, though.

In addition we don't need a # to show us how people will like or dislike something. Are we giving everyone something awesome? You can be pretty sure it'll be voted up a lot. Are we announcing an unpopular but necessary nerf? You can be pretty sure it'll be down voted a lot. We could guess with near 100% accuracy before we post something how people are going to react, so seeing vote #'s just isn't informative.

There's nothing in those vote numbers that are helpful to us in understanding the specific issues people take with something (or on the flip side, reasons why they like it), and they're also not 'news' to us as we know generally how well people are going to like or dislike something. We much prefer, as the forums tend to encourage, replies with constructive and meaningful feedback.

I realize it's easier to click a button than write out a detailed response, but if you're interested in providing us real and meaningful information we can use, then you're going to have to put some effort into it.

You, thankfully, seem to understand the true nature of the post and its intentions. The main idea behind the "idea"--if it could thus be called--would be to find a way to get through the flames. Drudging through the multitude of "those" responses when there is a major post of upcoming content or other such things can be overly tedious and deflect attention away from almost any topic.

I wouldn't be surprised if it in some way has prevented people from posting in threads or adding their two cents. I had to get moderately flamed just for this "idea"... now imagine if I posted constructive feedback on why mages are OP? eeek, I kid, but you see my point.

Hrm. I have to be honest, you've lost me. But it seems like you were happy with my response, so I'll leave it at that. :)