Necessity
<a href="http://zork.net/motd/2002/10/24#octal/2002-10-24T20:28:29-0700">Octal</a>:
The script enforces a bit of policy by making the user's subdir and giving the file the appropriate .txt extension. Did you know that you can type "motd tinkerbell" and it'll make a tinkerbell.txt file?
Of course, it's not as powerful as simply editing the files yourself. It can't do sub-subdirs, for example (all slashes get turned to underscores). But it's good for getting folks to make entries off the bat.