If you are a typical e2 author, it is very likely that you like to twiddle your scratchpad html until your writeup looks just perfect on your screen. This, in the case of several authors, includes putting <blockquote> and <ol> tags in until the gutter is just the right width.
Lemme tell ya something. You, as an author of an html document on a public website, have almost no control over what the end user will see. Maybe your reader is blind, maybe your reader is using a palmtop or a mobile phone. Maybe your reader isn't using their browser in full screen mode because it's easier to read text that isn't too wide. Maybe your reader likes to have a larger font.
Maybe your reader is me.
I have a user stylesheet in my notelet, which puts a margin around paragraphs and puts a huge margin around blockquotes - because I like blockquotes that stand out. The advantage of this is that dichotomyboi's writeup above looks absolutely gorgeous. The disadvantage is that, because of one or two people (I haven't bothered to look for the culprit), this year's Prosenoder's cup is rather too wide for my window. Half the writeups, I can't read properly, because they take up more than my screen width. Those that I can read are those with extra blockquotes, but because of the fuckupage, they don't actually have a gutter to the right. So thank you for ruining the whole page for me.
I have noded on this topic before. I have also noded on the similar topic of semantic markup. I also seem to remember writing an entry for the E2 FAQ on the subject, but I can't find the bloody thing. Most people have told me that, quite frankly, they don't care. The large inconvenience to the few is apparently outweighed by the small improvement in legibility to the many.
On this occasion, I'm not trying to be pedantic. You people can and will do as you like. The take home message is this: if you want to control the layout of your work perfectly, create your own website or write a book; otherwise, just mark it up nicely and let me read it how I have e2 set up.
Once I have access to the machine where I host my css file, I may or may not take the time to counteract these annoyances. But the large-scale problem will still remain.