I don’t know if this is described anywhere or if anyone has asked, but is there any way of hiding the “The Straight Dope Message Board” banner at the top of the page?
If I’m taking a break at work and I want to read the Dope, I would prefer it if this wasn’t so visible and obvious to passers by, in our very open office environment.
Would a monitor privacy protector screen help?
If you can use Adblock Plus at work, it can block individual elements. Blocking the Banner should be easy. Just right click on the banner and choose Block Element
To restore later, click on the ABP icon and click the gear 
for settings.
Click Advanced and scroll down to My Filter List
Click the check box next to ||global.discourse- and click Delete at the bottom.
WE computes!
You can also temporarily hide parts of a web page by using the ‘Inspect’ tool. It doesn’t require adding any software or apps, it’s already built in to many browsers. It does require a very minimal familiarity with HTML.
Right-click in the general area of the banner or whatever you want to hide and choose ‘Inspect’ from the menu. the inspect panel comes up with a display of the HTML that the page is built from. If you hover over different parts of the HTML it highlights the corresponding page areas.
When you find an area you want to hide, just click the corresponding HTML (it’s usually the wrapping outer ‘div’ you want), right-click, choose ‘edit as HTML’, highlight everything in the edit box that opens, and delete it all, then click out of the edit box to close it. That area will disappear. It will be restored as soon as you refresh the page, or leave the page and return.
That may sound complicated, but if you play with it a bit it’s actually pretty easy to do. If you delete something you didn’t want to, you can just refresh the page and start over.
This is the way.
1 to 1 1/2 inch wide masking tape along the top of the screen.
I presume that this could be achieved with a Greasemonkey (or equivalent) script ?
Probably, but the benefit of the method I suggested is that no software, apps or browser extensions need to be added-- most browsers already have an ‘inspect’ tool that allows you to temporarily manipulate the HTML.
With my IT expertise and our various firewalls etc, I think that this is the approach I’ll have to take.
Check into a privacy screen like kayaker suggests. It won’t help with someone directly behind you, but people walking by won’t be able to see anything. You can get ones that simply hang off the monitor, so no installation required.
At least for me (Edge browser on Win10 with Straight Dope Light theme selected) the big yellow THE STRAIGHT DOPE MESSAGE BOARD disappears as soon as I scroll the page up. After that there’s just a yellow SD in it’s place.
Same for me. (I am using the same browser and same theme, though I’m on Win11.)
See, I find that if I just squint my ears real tight, it achieves the same function. And it’s cheaper!
OP here, thanks for all the info, though I was really hoping that buried in a menu somewhere would be a “view in simplified mode” or something of that nature.
It’s not actually a huge issue so much as a preference when at work; fortunately my company is really pretty cool and pragmatic about things as long as the work gets done.
ears ?
What? You don’t squint with your ears?
Fine by me if you want to be weird. Let your freak flag fly, my friend.
(….stupid autocorrect)
Some people blink with their ears.
My first thought.
Adding to this, the OP mentioned wanting the ability to do this at work, where administrator access and/or company policy issues might prohibit adding software and scripts.