But why?
Well, my self-interested reason for the rule was that it's really annoying listening to that kind of whining and not taking responsibility. But a better reason is that the rule made the kids think about the reason for the rule, and maybe encouraged them to take responsibility instead of blaming someone/something else.
I never thought of using <span />! I always used <span></span>.
You can see the code of people's replies?
I've been doing much too much editing HTML by hand in BJC. There are all those <img ... /> and <br /> things to remind me about slashes ending tags.
You can click the quote whole post button in the top left (
) while making a reply to see the raw contents.