Thank you for thinking about those of us who choose to stay quiet. It is much appreciated. :)
I can't speak for other lurkers, but I at least (do I still count now that I'm writing this?) would greatly appreciate a feature along these lines. I come to this site because I enjoy reading the articles you all post and the conversations that result. I don't come here in hopes of finding long comment chains filled with passive aggressive arguments over nothing. That is why I would not enjoy this:
The Muter might even enjoy seeing friends deliver staggeringly witty rejoinders to oafen stupidities.
If I have blocked someone because they tend to spur annoying arguments, then I would prefer not to see any part of that argument at all, even if it is the half that I favour. I would much rather have it so that any comment chain that results from a user I have muted gets muted as well.
Also, perhaps a single notification could be displayed at the top or bottom of the comment section, notifying you that you're missing out on x number of comments because you muted a user, instead of having a notification in the place of every muted comment. This would be a lot more pleasant to look at, and gives less instances for one to be tempted into peaking.
Regardless of what happens to the muting feature however, I'm sure hubski will continue to hold a relatively high standard of discourse. Y'all have got a nice little community here. Glad I happened across it.
Thank you sir or madam, I tip my hat to you as you retreat into the shadows. I didn't post for over 600 days after creating an account here, and still like to think of myself as a lurker at heart. I am not the first to mention the idea of hiding comments from muted users, and I have also seen your idea of collapsable comment trees before. There are examples of the structure using JavaScript and DHTML. Being able to collapse and expand branches of the conversation tree might be helpful by itself; I get lost sometimes trying to remember who is responding to whom. You suggest a good additional idea that branches started by a user you have muted be collapsed by default, so you can choose to see the passive aggression. Everybody likes choice, right?