I happen to be recently returned from an area where internet connections are still slow: modem speed at best, in the hundreds of kb per second at worst. While I was away I gave up following other sites which lack an "all text" option, but stuck with this one for all the reasons cited above. What's more, I've got family and friends on dialups scattered around the States and Canada. This is not as rare as one might think; many areas don't have broadband options at any price, and one friend lives in a town which operates wholly (phone and internet) on an experimental satellite hookup, funded by the provincial government. Sometimes I send links to this site. People really do appreciate fast load times. <br><br>I also agree with Lowell, as is often the case. There's no denying the appeal of quality photos in a trip report, but I find that many postings on other boards consist almost entirely of photos, with bits of limp prose inserted almost as an afterthought. I'm a visual person, but I really appreciate well-crafted writing (sometimes I believe myself to have achieved this for a moment or two, but these moments are rare). While I do miss the reports from Sky, among others, I also treasure many of those which do appear here. Yeah, it's a challenge to write engagingly, but surely it's no more difficult than, say, telemark skiing. <br><br>Perhaps a compromise of some sort: no wider than (600? 800?) pixels, no larger than 50 or 80 kb, no more than (two? three?) photos per thread, with photo privileges limited to the original poster. Would that make enough of a difference to make it worthwhile?
