by Celedam » Sun Feb 05, 2012 1:00 pm
Since you're new, an explanation...
Animated GIFs can get big. Very big. And when people check the site on their phones or on older computers or on limited bandwidth, those big animated GIFs can cause problems. If we post them just anywhere, then they're like land mines. So we try to keep them all in a single thread, where people must deliberately choose to go.
And no, enclosing them in spoiler tags does not prevent the browser from loading them.