I should also add that the source of the highlighted questions for me is Frequented Tags. As opposed to Favorite Tags, they are not created by any specific action I performed.

What would have made it intuitive is if the tags in the list of Favorite Tags had a slightly different style, and that same style was used for the favorite tag(s) in the question.

If you're saying put giant crudely-drawn red circles on the page, then yes that would work, but probably won't get approved. If you're saying that I should have been able to figure it out because of the favorite tags list at the right, I saw that, and it was not intuitive for me.

I originally omitted examples to avoid arguing over specifics. My goal was to get a sense of how the established members of SF felt about down voting new members, and I feel that's been achieved. Thanks to all who responded.