[chriskjennings]

We work hard to improve our default theme offering, Narcissus, with every release. Narcissus is designed to look good and perform well in all situations. A consequence of this all-encompassing approach is that in some situations the look can come across as a bit cluttered.

However with only a few lines of CSS you can transform Narcissus to fit the needs of your site--just like Engadget, Thoughtbot and many others have so eloquently done.

Saying this, we hear you. There is definitely a need for a minimalist theme at Disqus and we have some time set aside in the near future to make it happen.