Alexander, I understand your hostility. While we agree that readers should have the option of turning off or dimming highlights, we obviously disagree on options for writers. It’s not that I want to be immune to commenting and responses. Not at all. I welcome that — even the negative stuff. I love interaction when it is done in a civilized manner. That’s what the response function is for. But it’s off to the margins — the bottom margin — rather than directly on top of the work where it can be an annoying distraction to subsequent readers (and it is an extreme annoyance to me as a reader). If readers had the option of turning off the highlights they can read without the distractions then see how other readers reacted in the response section below the article. If readers had that option I wouldn’t be asking for that option for writers. (Although I would still like a way to go into an article that had been hit by a highlighting attack and undo that excessive highlighting. And yes, they may be very rare but these highlighting attacks do occur even if you have not personally experienced it. )

I don’t care for your attitude of, “If you don’t like the tools exactly as they are then you should just leave.” I feel that tools can always be improved upon.