I hate pics like this. What am I supposed to be looking at? What an ugly layout, it looks like someone emptied a random bag of colours, letters and numbers on a page.
Awful, gives me a headache just looking at it.
*hugs GAF's clean, tidy aesthetic*
It is a message board of freedom without names or avatars. Each post has it's own number, and it is a bit easier to actually understand if you use the site then just look at it. For instance if you hovered over any of the blue
>>(insert number here) it would highlight the actual post, or if it is off screen, bring up a hovering window with the quoted post. The numbers in blue at the end of the top bar of a post show that that post has been quoted by another post, and if you hover over them it will also highlight/make the quote hover over. It is a really good way to see if you have been quoted, and see the quote itself without having to go and find it. Lastly if you click the "post number", the thing after "No." it will add that to a post you are writing in the form of the blue underlined number you see in the other posts. Can also highlight a segment of that persons post before clicking that number to have that added as well as quote text.
The randomized mess of letters after "ID" is something that is only on a few of the boards, and are just a randomized unique ID that stays the same for each individual poster in only that thread. If you click that all the posts made by that person in that thread will be highlighted. There is not a lot that is superfluous, and everything has it's function. Just go dick around a bit on /v/ and you will find a bunch of board functions that you would wish that gaf had, and that isn't even with all the mods you can use on the site.