User blog comment:Zapwire/Wikia's new "features" are bugs/@comment-78562-20091024053656

Oh sithspit, the RTE...now that I figured out what those initials mean.

This will be my only blog post on Wikia ever -- ever, d'you hear me! -- simply to wax not-so-philosophical about what a clusterf**k that the RTE is. It's ugly, it breaks things, and us experienced editors have to learn a whole new set of rules, "features" (those quotes are sarcastic) and buttons to even produce the most basic stuff.

If you're "new" to wiki editing, you've got no business creating a brand-new wiki anyway, so that's one half of the "incentive" to attract them gone. The other half goes with the fact that wiki formatting isn't that difficult to learn anyway. If you can use Microsoft Word, you can learn wiki editing; it's even easier than the most basic HTML out there. If you want to learn the more challenging stuff, like creating templates, there are thousands of folks out there just waiting to help. If you want to get super-advanced and play around with Javascript, CSS, and other nifty toys, there are far better places to learn, like college courses.

To put it bluntly: as soon as I realized that the RTE could be disabled permanently through preferences, it was, and not a nanosecond too soon. Dollars to doughnuts says that thousands of others, like me, were not at all eager to learn a whole new way of wiki-editing when the old system worked just fine and dandy for years.

To jump on the bandwagon of axioms: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."