It would be really great if you could scroll down without worrying about hitting the next article. Basically, have a mode where the only way to get to the next article is by specifically requesting it, eg, by hitting the ‘j’ key, clicking with the mouse, etc. If you were already at the bottom of the current article, further attempt to scroll would not do anything.
This way, you don’t have to worry about accidentally marking something as read if you have the “mark as read automatically” option set.
Well, you can lock the “dorito” (the read indicator line), or switch to the single story mode. Alternatively, you can use dev.newsblur.com which has a nice List view (the toggle in the top-right switches between the default split view and the list view).