I second this too. Even though I understand and respect the goals behind discourse UI design, the looks are something there can never be a strong consensus on because Discourse is in my opinion already very refined and quite spot on.
While codinghorror sees the minimalistic view as less readable and prefers avatars over usernames, I personally think the small avatars are nothing but irritating noise, and some people might argue that avatars should not be used at all while others might want more and even bigger ones.
My professional opinion is, despite sounding shallow or giving the impression that “i’m not getting it”, these issues are effectively matters of taste, so making customization easier also brings the prime ideas of Discourse closer to both admins and users that are not yet comfortable with Discourse.