Following on from hiding unwanted elements in comment forms, I found this tip on one of the many threads in Drupal of people trying to hide the pesky formatting guidelines and came up with:
template.php
<?php
function [theme_name]_form_comment_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state, $form_id)
{
$form['comment_body']['#after_build'][] = 'remove_tips';
}
function remove_tips(&$form)
{
unset($form['und'][0]['format']['guidelines']);
unset($form['und'][0]['format']['help']);
return $form;
}
?>
That gets rid of everything but the fieldset container and for the roles that can use multiple text formats, the select box (the "Text format" label can be easily removed with $form['und'][0]['format']['format']['#title'] = ''; in the comment_form_alter).
