I just did a quick view source on this page and there are no tables. Each post is within a classed div. PERL is the problem. Now the posting page is indeed in tables, but it’s minimal HTML and shouldn’t cause performance issues. Porting to PHP or JSP would be a very large effort. I’m not sure what DB is used, but that might also be a performance drag.
Otherwise the presentation layer is good overall and simple. Changing the presentation layer would cause a whole lot of grief for users.
Yes, there are two tables, one near the top and one near the bottom.
Also, the HR tag is unnecessary, as is including CSS within the HEAD tag.
That all adds up to extra client-facing code, which increases bandwidth and overburdens the servers and costs more money.
I’ve been doing frontend web work since 1993. FWIW.