"Questions that are deemed sufficiently off-topic may be closed by the community". At the moment, it seems like questions that are even just a little bit off-topic - or might be off-topic, but hasn't been agreed on yet - are being closed or having close votes. I don't think it's possible to see where down-votes have been cast, so it's possible they are occurring too, but given that there aren't any negative-vote questions, it seems unlikely.
My understanding was that if a question isn't very good - if it's badly asked, unclear, or just not really an interesting question - then the appropriate action was to down-vote it. If it just totally doesn't belong (i.e. there's a clear consensus that it doesn't belong, and isn't close) then vote-to-close.
Am I wrong about the intended use of the question down-vote? If not, does it not apply during a beta? (e.g. in a beta is the use of close-votes favoured over down-votes?)