Hmm, I don't think I've fully made up my mind yet about the vote counts... it seems that traditionally there isn't such an emphasis placed on them (only people who vote on nodes get to see the reputation, plus Best Nodes and Worst Nodes, I don't think they're displayed elsewhere?), so suddenly showing them might be considered too drastic. Hence my idea of using some other indicator. I'm just brainstorming here, but perhaps just a note at the top of the node where the vote count usually is saying that a certain threshold has been passed.

As for CSS and settings for showing/hiding stuff, I think that it's very important what new visitors see (as Anonymous Monk), so there'd have to be a useful default.