Not for those who publish, you know, WRITING

Imagine you open up your word processor and try to get on with writing your article, a new chapter in your book, anything that is text made up of paragraphs… and you find that before you start a new paragraph you must click a tiny icon and pick something from the list. In what universe is this or can it ever be good? Useful? Convenient? How could it ever make you work faster rather than way slower?

I suppose if all you post are price tags and dizzy marketing shots, then Gutenberg does make your job easier. But if you publish, you know, writing – it’s not just a nuisance, it’s a show-stopper. And horror.

I am an editor (I edit and publish other people’s writing) and a translator (I publish my own work). I don’t actually write in WP or in the browser at all, since a browser is not a convenient tool for writing text, but I edit and tweak a lot in the WP editor. A few observations:

– I used to have the whole width of my screen available for text. Now it’s more like half of the screen width or less, with lots of empty space on the sides. This means a lot of additional scrolling. Not good.

– I often prefer to use the code editor, but now the toolbar has been removed from there, so if I want to add a link, I have to type html manually. No sweat, I can do that in my sleep, but why?! Why remove the toolbar and make things harder for me?

– The sidebar now has many important settings hidden and requires more mouse clicks every time – again, why? It’s not about some esoteric stuff, but major options such as tags. (Oh, and commonly used tags are no longer displayed there, out of spite, I guess, because I can think of no rational reason to remove that useful little helper)

– And then, of course, the blocks. We can move them! Oh goody! Because I’ve always spent so much time making the first paragraph in an article the third, and moving the fourth para to the end, right? Right? Um, how shall I put it, guys: no. That almost never happens. Maybe you do this with lines of code, but it’s not that common at all with, ahem, prose. Articles. When you do need to do it, then you cut and paste, that’s one reason c&p was invented. But not this.

– I used to be able to instantly save my article as a draft. I use this many times every day, because I edit the articles, but someone else decides when they actually go online. So I need that button right where it always was – but, no more. I suppose the functionality is still available somewhere, but I could not immediately find it, and if it is hidden and requires additional clicks to unhide, it frustrates me and slows me down and it means I have to do more work for the same pay.

So I did not go looking for “Save draft”, I just installed Disable Gutenberg. But in the long run I’ll have to move off WordPress, because it is no longer a platform for writing; it is now officially a platform for marketroids and peddlers of nonsense. Have you hired some influencers already?