People who have no personal opinion in forums.

[Lace Neil Singer]

If that's the case, then not posting would be better; just quoting a thread and saying "this" or "I agree" is actually against the rules on some forums, cuz it counts as spamming.

[HYHYBT]

How about agreeing *without* quoting the whole thing? If you're asking for people's opinions, that two people happen to have the same one can be useful information.

[Lace Neil Singer]

That doesn't bother me as much; it's quoting a humungous post and just adding "this" to the end that's annoying.

[the_std]

How about agreeing *without* quoting the whole thing? If you're asking for people's opinions, that two people happen to have the same one can be useful information.

I dunno, I think it depends on the content. On CS, I don't really care about this behavior. People are going to be silly sometimes, that's fine. But when I see it on here, which is a debate site, it's irritating. If you agree, then you obviously feel something about it... Why not expound on it a bit, elaborate why you agree or your own viewpoint? Doing the "this" kind of agreeance makes you seem like a bit of a dullard with no creativity, to me. We're supposed to be reasonably intelligent here.

[HYHYBT]

Precisely because it's a debate site, though, it makes sense to know how many participants hold which positions, even when some of them are duplicates. I've often had a response typed out, sometimes taking far too long over composing it, only to read further down that someone else has said the same thing already, but far better. Which, then, is best: 1) say nothing, leaving the impression that x is the only one who thinks that way; 2) post my inferior duplicate anyway; or 3) say some variant of "I agree"?

[Lace Neil Singer]

2) would be the best bet. Then you're adding your agreement, but not just posting the pointless "I agree". Even if you just post a single sentence, along the lines of "I agree cuz...", it's still better than the single/two words of "this" and "I agree."