It would be easy enough to do, but my gut tells me it would be a mistake, because it would make it easier for the site as a whole to deteriorate. As long as everyone has to see every story, there's a lot of pressure not to have bad stuff.

Paul Buchheit dislikes optional settings in software for similar reasons. He thinks they're usually just a way to punt on hard design decisions. Nearly everyone is going to use the defaults anyway, so you should just work hard to make those are right.