Minority held viewpoints should be just as respected as one held by the majority. They are marginalized enough by threads being sorted by node rep. Free speech is not something for the monastery alone, let the wider internet see it too, warts and all.

People love getting internet-indignant. I thought that was the whole appeal of the --, to get the feeling you are doing something about it. Log in, oh visitor, that you may smite this wrong answer that you just stumbled upon.

Argumentum ad populum in a nutshell, and I think nodes disappearing from a conversation would be a worse experience than not seeing them. If we don't have ability to do it for our own posts, the mob shouldn't either.

So, I think that, submitting your opinion to the internet for validation is pretty stupid, but yet, the human desire to express online seems pretty evident. Mistakes should be made on the side of toleration.