mcedit, the editor of the infamous Norton--err, Midnight Commander, was my best friend back in the good old days of writing php via ssh directly on the server of our university's LUG. It even supports block editing!

But please, instead of screaming upon being hit with that bright blue background, run mc, press F9, go to General > Appearance and select the dark or darkfar theme :) (and F10 to save config and exit)

Having said that, it breaks my heart a little to see nano bashed like that. (those of you who upvoted parent, I'm looking at you too!)

nano is 1) designed to be the best editor for slow connections, 2) Its source code is also quite easy to instrument. Eg. if you need a nano that is able to edit just a single file, someone familiar with application programming in C on linux can do it in no time.