I hesitated to do so for so long because it generally discourages behavior where a reply post is made that adds nothing meaningful to the conversation.
By way of a great example, houz’s post to show approval for something said on the forum is already handled through the “Like” mechanism, and while reading I would expect that a response that wanted to post something might at least take to time to write out a reasonable thought that added to the conversation. “Word” or “+1” or “I agree” doesn’t add anything to the actual conversation and only clutters up the forum.
I also know that this has been bothering you for a while, @Morgan_Hardwood, so I’ve removed the limitation. 
(Well, set it to a min of 1 character, as they’ve removed the ability to set it to 0 at the moment).