"There are a lot of obvious benefits to making software configurable, and these benefits are plain to all."<p>I must no longer be part of all.  There are many websites that offer little configuration and work just fine for the vast majority of users (look I'm on one now!).<p>I've worked on enough projects to know that users will always want to be greeted by LOLcats instead of "Welcome to boring-corporate-system" or be able to change the background to lime-green.  Focus on making a system usable from the get go, instead of letting each person craft usability out of a tangled web of configurations.