Originally Posted by
RichMSN
Serious question -- do you really concern yourself with slow connections in 2014? I live under the assumption that everyone's on some kind of broadband option now.
However, if the board contained a lot of pictures, I'd agree with you as load times / server processing would then be an issue. The board I administer has few images, no avatars, etc.
Serious answer-- there really are forum participants in countries who have slow connections even with broadband, due to lack of enough international bandwidth access, national firewalls, need to use VPN which slows things down, etc. etc. As well as the in-travel situations already mentioned. Heck, even when in the USA, I'm in a region with very poor broadband options and lousy connections, regardless of device.
Lack of pictures and avatars IMO is a blessing of FT. I hope it continues. I prefer information sites like this to run lean and mean with as little frou-frou as possible. That's part of the site's value proposition.