Why are the devs ignoring us?

It’s the difference between Constructive Criticism vs. Destructive Criticism.

When all you have to say is “this is bad, don’t do it” then that’s not helpful. Not really. That’s destructive criticism. You’re not saying why it’s bad, you’re just offering an opinion without any specific details. All that the developer can do is to ask you for more information about what you found bad about it.

If you say “this is bad because X is broken, Y is bad, and Z is not working properly” then that is constructive criticism. You are providing valuable feedback that is useful to the person doing the development.

See, you’re thinking that this can be avoided, somehow. It cannot. This is the future of the WordPress Editor. The callout in 4.9.8 basically gave you the two options. It said that you can try Gutenberg now and provide feedback, or you can install the Classic Editor plugin to continue to use the current editing system when 5.0 comes around.

Gutenberg will be in WordPress 5.0. That is not a thing that is going to change. That has been in the works for nearly 2 years now, and the Gutenberg plugin has been publicly available and iterated on here on www.remarpro.com for 14 months. This is happening, so requests for it to not happen are not valid ones. You already have an opt-out option in the form of the Classic Editor plugin, and the callout in 4.9.8 explicitly tells you this fact.

So the only type of criticism that is valid is constructive criticism. Anything else is only going to get a response to try to assist you in being constructive about your criticism, so that actual issues can be addressed.

I get the differences between constructive and destructive criticism. But, it appears like even some of the constructive criticism is going ignored. I will start with my reply with a thank you for your reply and full explanation. Again, as I pointed out, Gutenberg (In my opinion) has some potential sure. But, it is overly complicated and tasks that take myself and my members 5 to 10 minutes to complete took me 30 minutes when I tested Gutenberg.

I am not against change and growth. And, sure the editor could use some tweaking here and there. But, just from the time I spent using Gutenberg I ran into several bugs that have been pointed out by many other people. Sure, it’s in beta and there’s going to be bugs. Sure, there’s going to be dissenters… But, when a plugin that is being implemented into the core programming is rated at 2.5/5 and most of the reviews are only 1 star I would seriously question it.

Also, and this is a key factor in why I do not feel like this is a good fit for WP, I run a text based fanfiction group. Gutenberg is simply not compatible with what we do. I fail to understand why a system that prides itself on user choice is forcing me to either use a system that simply does not work for my writers nor myself… Or, I have to install another plugin to continue to use WP as I do now.

Then there is another question…

What happens when this classic editor plugin stops receiving support?

I do honestly want to see WP continue to thrive, but I also believe that when a majority of the user base appears to not want something that is being forced upon them that is (in my opinion) a mistake. I get it… You’re just an admin, but let me just say from a “consumer” point of view:

This has some serious ramifications for my writers and myself. We are in serious talks when it comes to taking our business elsewhere and using a different platform.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by confusedfire.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by confusedfire.

The download stats for Gutenberg and Classic Editor provide an interesting insight. Unfortunately, they don’t show how many uninstalled them.

However, while Gutenberg has been downloaded nearly half a million times, the number for “installed” is 80K+

Akismet, for example, is 5M+

When the option to try Gutenberg appeared, only around 3,000 people had downloaded Classic Editor. Three days later, over 84,000 have.

To me, that means over 80,000 people actively decided they prefer the original editor over Gutenberg. That alone should be a wake-up call to WP.

We all know that when companies make a decision, they are going to deploy it – regardless of what their users say. Any criticism will be tolerated at first, then policed, and eventually blocked.

This reply will be deleted quickly I suspect. Not because it says anything wrong, but because it is not what WP wants to hear.

I run many WP sites and one is a Meetup alternative. The majority of group admins struggle with the current editor. They are not technically minded. They would get hopelessly lost trying to use a page builder – any page builder.

The attraction of WP is its basic simplicity and wide range of plugins. Making it difficult for non-geeks is only going to devalue WP. Having a page builder as an option is a good idea, but it must be only an option.

After discussing at length with the writers on my page at length over the past few days we have reached the decision to start using a different platform to write on. I could go further into details, but I will refrain from doing so. I think everyone who has been saying the same thing since it became officially known that this is going into core with version 5.0 knows the reasoning to this. And, while I would like to thank @sandgroper for his insightful points and @otto42 for at least taking the time to engage my concerns with civil dialog I also feel that my requests (and so many others) are falling on deaf ears.

It also speaks volumes to me when someone who has been using WP for more than ten years posts their own review where at the bottom they say why they are leaving WP. Finally, and this is key, given the option between using a plugin to keep my site working the way it does now, using Gutenberg which is really buggy and takes more than twice as long to do a single task, or simply throwing in the towel and going somewhere else I will take the third option every time.

So, with that I am marking this as resolved and bidding my farewells to the WP community.

Funny…. This topic has been marked as “resolved”….

Oh, yeah? I doubt that! I operate numerous WP based sites, some for myself and some for clients.

This forced change is going to turn WordPress on its head. Seriously…

WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU FORCE US into using Gutenberg as part of WP Core? Don’t you realize that many of us have automation set up in various forms, which is almost GUARANTEED to make garbage out of our existing sites if we don’t back-pedal and load and activate the “old editor plugin” on every one of those sites?

I will have to be seriously considering a change of platform here. Very sad!

MAKE IT OPTIONAL!

And please don’t reply to me some krap like… “tell us why it doesn’t work for you, so we can make it better.” That is completely IRRELEVANT.

End of Rant….

@dood7017 The author of this thread says that he marked it as resolved just a couple lines above your rant there.

As for optional, if you want to continue using the current editor when 5.0 comes out, the Classic Editor plugin has been made available for exactly that purpose. If you install it, you will continue to have the existing editor when WordPress integrates the Gutenberg editor into core.

Also, as with all WordPress major releases, it will not be an automated update. Feel free to continue using WordPress 4.9 if that is what you prefer to use. Security updates will continue to be backported for the forseeable future. We still backport security fixes as far back as WordPress 3.7, for example.

@otto42 can you please lock this topic?

@confusedfire Sure thing.