[DirectorTsaarx]

There is one valid reason to quote the post immediately preceding your reply: there are a number of cases where multiple replies are added at once; since there may not be an indication that such an event is in progress until after the fact, there are two possible ways to handle it. The first requires crafting a post without the quote, posting the reply, and then editing the quote back in once one determines that an intervening simul-post has confused matters. The second method is to go ahead and quote the immediately preceding post, and deleting said quote afterwards (or at least editing the unnecessary portions out) if a simul-post did not occur.

Besides, I think the graphics on each page (especially the various avatars) use more bandwidth than some extra text. After all, when I'm on dialup, the text generally appears first, and quite quickly, while sometimes it takes up to a minute for all the avatars, buttons, etc. to appear.

Edit: just to prove my point, by the time I crafted & posted this reply, there were 3 (!!!) new Posts to this thread - from SJ, tbontob and Ragnarok...

[ March 20, 2003, 16:59: Message edited by: DirectorTsaarx ]