>What is the easiest way to empty the Reply section in the left pane?

Hilmar provided many ways. Just to be sure, the closest one we have to delete in batch is the mark all visible message in one shot (100) and hit delete. So, at least, you can delete 100 in one shot. I didn't want to include an option for a global delete for security reason. We also assume most of the members would regularly maintain the reply section so it is very rare one would have a lot of entries there. So, mark all would be the closest option to use.

>Hey, new photo? :)

Yep