I realize that we haven’t had it for quite a while now, and this post is more than a bit late.
I really liked just being able to type in a reply and submitting it without having to go through an extra “click and wait” step. I don’t need anything in the regular reply window because I usually do vB tags manually anyway and I never use smilies.
May we have it back, or was it causing problems I’m not aware of?
I remember one of our admins promissing to add it to their to-do list. That was some time last year.
How does it effect bandwidth?
I like it too, but I seem to recall that it was one of those “have patience” items. As in, the intent is there to put it back (seems to me it would save some bandwidth on the board, because it won’t be necessary to load a separate reply screen, which would be a good thing; though as I think about it I wonder whether making replies easier will increase the volume of that and thus create a net zero improvement; and further it’s sort of amusing that my parenthetical aside is far longer than my actual post, so let’s see if you can remember where I left off when I close this comment), but they haven’t had the technical staff time to actually implement the thing.
It probably doesn’t add significantly to bandwidth, if at all: The extra code for the box can’t be very long compared to the thread as a whole, and the server would be spared the burden of delivering most of the reply pages.
As I understand it, the biggest obstacle is figuring out how to do it. It’s not a part of out-of-the-box vBulletin, so it has to be edited in as a custom change. The Administration is understandably reluctant to implement any changes to the underlying board software, as such changes can make it much more difficult to obtain technical support, and generally have a risk of totally thrashing the board. They are willing to make certain superficial changes, such as changing the copyright boilerplate at the bottom of the pages, or adding new tags (the sup and sub tags are custom tags here). Now, in the older version, someone somewhere had figured out a way to implement a quick-reply using only those superficial changes, and it had been used on enough other boards that we were able to trust its reliability (we’re not about to be the guinea pigs). Apparently, with the new version, either nobody else has figured out how to do it yet, or it isn’t well-tested and reliable yet, or it takes enough time to implement that nobody here has gotten around to it yet.
We were just talking about this and requested the quick reply box when Jerry did the next upgrade/tweaking, plus some other goodies (like maybe custom titles).
It would be cool to have one
Custom titles? With our traffic, I imagine that would be a huge headache.
I’d love to have the quick reply hack back though.
I can’t see how.
Have you ever administrated a message board? I’ve done a few, none of which had five percent of the traffic of this place, and managing little things like custom titles in addition to more important matters like pruning, moderating, etc was a hassle I’d’ve rather done without.
Ask and ye shall receive. Let’s see how this works.
If it impacts board performance negatively, we’ll back off, but what the heck, we’ll try it.
your humble TubaDiva
Admnistrator
Quick reply test.
And a test of my own. Talk about expedient service. Quick, Exgineer, wish for money!
Awsome, I forgot about that thing.
I just noticed it about 3:15. 
Tuba. Shouldn’t you expect initial bandwidth issues when everyone goes mad trying out their new toy?
And if so, hope it dies off and we get to keep it. It’s clever too, the activation, and the ability to quote message in reply. (for the one you clicked the access wobbly)
Just a test. Og happy!
quick test w/o quote?
I don’t get it, what’ it do?
test
How’s this different than the usual reply button?
a trst of my own…
I believe the idea is you don’t have to load in the reply page, so using the quick reply is easier on both poster and server.