Not having read the whole thread (and sorry about the late response), but here my thoughts anyway.

• The idea is to put even more weight behind the votes, without working on the vote quality? Hm.
• So a decision was made, that preference is given to information folding instead of presentation choices ((de-)emphasis, etc.)?
• A community building effort? Consensus building effort? Rose-tinted glasses for the outside view? Consensus building can be good or it can be bad. Community building can be good or it can be bad. (Walled-garden aspect and so on).
• Slowly but surely, in little baby-steps, the Anonymonk seems to get marginalised. There's a certain monk who has advocated for outright removal of the Anonymonk. I wonder if he gets what he wants, in the end?
• Hm. Could it be that the certain monk is a manufactured entity, the arch-enemy figure for the community cinematic experience? Like paco was the content seed? *inhales smoke*
• In a discussion long ago, I outlined my take on this matter: flexible node depth in the thread view. What else does one need? Although cutting off the 1st level replies en masse would be dismissive and obscure, so better keep them individually as
  -> a reply by Foo
• Having a fixed "browsing threshold" that does not account for the size of the thread is like slashdot and IMO terrible.
• As an aside, I had this 1apr idea about replying to nodes with considered (grand)parent: anyone who wants to respond has to play an automated game of rock-paper-scissors, winning 2 out of 3. Except on Tuesdays. Then you have to lose on purpose.
• But really, why would you want to hide content from search engines? Shame?
• And finally, why focus or obsess with the negative? Why not emphasize the good stuff instead so that the negative would not even need caveats attached?

ps. I seem to have lots of sentences ending with a question mark, isn't that so?