I realize this may not be obvious to many, but I am blind and use a software program called a screen reader which translates what's on the screen into synthetic speech. It's a wonderful thing but it does only give me at best, a line at a time view of what's going on, but in truthis really word-by-word or even ccharacter-by-character.
There has been a growing trend on this forum for people to use the "reply with quote" button when replying to a post, and of course then the author also typically posts a few words at the bottom off the post. That's fine if you can see where the original post ends and the new one starts, but I can't and end up having to read an unbelieveable number of posts over and over and over again, only to get an "I agree" or "that's funny" or similar post at the end. Often times there is also no paragraph break between the original and the response so I often miss the response altogether unless I back up and read it, which is especially frustrating when it really adds nothing.
Now I'm not saying to stop posting what ever you want, but if folks use the plain old "reply" button, than those short posts are easily skipped over.
Ok, that's my selfish reason for making this request, but on a more universal and practical side, using the basic "reply" function instead of "reply with quote" also makes things easier for other folks, especially those who may be reading from a smart phone, iPod touch or similar mobile device, but perhaps the largest reason is that it saves storage space, and a good amount of it if folks just reply without the quote.
If you are picking up something from the middle of a long thread, of course it is best to give some context to something you are replying to that may be out of sequence by then, but please just edit the post down to the few lines that your response is directed to, and delete the rest.
So many online forums have devolved to the repeated re-posting of previous responses in full, that I really can't even stand to visit themanymore. I'd really hate to feel forced to cut down my time on the BH forum for the same reason.
Again, sorry, but it has been a growing trend on this forum lately and it's starting to take a toll on my enjoyment of the forum, as I suspect it may be doing for others.
Thanks for listening,
Jim