Dear Word Press,
Your new editor is a fecking disgrace. Talk about reinventing the wheel! The poem I published a few minutes ago had to be copied and pasted, stanza by stanza, each one in its own private little box, because we have travelled back in time to when copy and paste didn’t exist and each poem had to be hand written with a quill pen and sent by carrier pigeon to be posted.
I used to post poetry often, wrote it in Word, copied it, posted it and Bob used to be your uncle. This round about, time-wasting process you’ve concocted is utterly illogical and retrograde, not to mention a right pain in the hole.
I don’t need blocks to play with, or shuffle around I just need a blank page that I can copy words onto in the same order that I wrote them, with the same lines separating them. Since you don’t seem to be offering that very simple option any more, I am looking for alternative accommodation.
Maybe this time next year you’ll have reinvented clockwork.
Jane
Jane Dougherty Writes 
i think all of us who do not like this change, need to let them know. we need the option to use the format that we prefer. i so get this
We don’t need all their bells and whistles, their moveable blocks etc etc. But that’s what we’ve got, and something as simple as posting a short poem is like trying to repair the electrics on a space shuttle in orbit.
Yes
I was going to write something similar but haven’t gotten round to it. The block editor is stupid! Unnecessary! As a creative, with little time, I’m forced to go on a course because WP prescribe what should be done. They’re trying to be the government? Blogger works well without pain in the backside formatting that has to be learned to please the technocrats.
What is so stupid is that the first times I used it it worked okay. It needed fiddling with but in the end it accepted the copy paste. Now it won’t. Something as basic as copy paste and it won’t do it. I don’t know who WP is aiming for as its customers but it isn’t us.
There is a ‘classic’ editor option in the grid of formats on offer which resembles the usual editor we are used to. It has its own problems though. A simple matter of centering an image proved impossible a while back. I haven’t blogged a lot lately but now that I want to get back into it, it’s clear some backsides would have to be kicked so one can actually carry on.
The classic one strips out the space between stanzas unless you use the paste as text option, but that gives loads of space, no way of closing up the lines. You’d think it would be simple. It will do all sorts of fancy formatting I’ve no doubt, but get a poem looking as it does in Word is beyond it.
I got away with posting a haiku and a photo yesterday without major obstacles. We’ll see.
If you don’t try and do anything complicated like post a four stanza poem and expect the spacing and the line breaks to appear, you’re okay.
So funny!
I used the block editor a couple of years ago (when they were still testing it). I got used to it but did NOT like it, and felt I had far fewer options than in the classic editor. So I completely understand!
There seems no reason why it can’t copy simple (the simplest) formatting and wants to shove everything into little boxes. It’s senseless. For posting poetry anyway.
I share your sentiments. Could not figure out half the things I wanted to do, such as simply labeling a photo. 😦
I don’t have enough life left to learn all this junk. I don’t need it.
You’ve expressed my feelings perfectly Jane. Yesterday’s poem had to be trashed twice and finally I finished it. The editing tools are so confusing and I wound up copy pasting an image because the “featured image” tool didn’t work. It’s time for me to renew and I am really debating whether I can deal with the aggravation! Thank you Jane.
I’m looking at other options. I don’t like blogger, I think the interface is really ugly, but there must be others.
I don’t know Jane. This is my third blog at WP…what got into them? Sigh.
I’m sure there are some users who are thrilled with it.
Agh, that’s hard to imagine.
Not poets, that’s for sure.
The block editor has been a disappointment! I post mostly poetry and although I use their verse block, it looks like crap on a mobile device, the words get broken and lines split! A complete failure! I’m send my thoughts to their happiness engineers🤬
All I want it to do is copy the formatting properly and it can’t do it without spending hours of fiddling. Who has the time?
Agreed!
The way I agree with every single thing you just said! This block editor is just too much work. I am tired of it already, honestly. I have no idea why they thought this was a good idea.
I don’t think they were thinking of simple writer’s blogs at all. I’m sure for a professional market place type site it’s wonderful. It’s just useless for us.
At least we had the option to switch over to the classic editor before. It’s really terrible how we don’t have that anymore.
The classic block isn’t the same at all.
Do you have a text editor that allows you to “paste in plain text.” If you do, it might help. Feel your frustration.
There’s a tool ‘paste as text’ that I just tried and it worked! Thank you! I’ll try it again and see if it still works tomorrow.
Great letter, which expresses the feelings of many WordPress users. Have you sent it to the “Happiness” engineers?
I wouldn’t know how, actually. But I’ve been given a tip that might work, to choose the classic block and ‘paste in text’. We’ll see.
I don’t know if you follow Pete’s blog, but he’s posted an email address for someone at WP who is working on accessibility for bloggers – it might be worth sending your letter to him at enrique.sanchez@automattic.com. You can view the full post here: https://beetleypete.com/2020/08/21/wordpress-owners-please-read/
Thanks Annabelle, I’ll pop over and read.
Jane, I could not have said it any better. I don’t know for others, but as for me, copy and paste in this newly invented f*****g piece of s**t is a no no. Pardon my French. My apologies. I do not have much hair at the top. Whatever I have left, I want to keep them. So may be stay away from posting till this gets fixed.
Reblogging this.
No, when they say the classic block replicates the old system, it doesn’t. Sometimes you can copy paste, other times you can’t, depends on its humour. Try this tip I just received. Choose the classic block then click on the ‘paste as text’ icon in the tool bar. It worked when I tried it. Whether it will always work is another matter entirely.
Yes, it does but still need to reformat. At least it allows to reformat. The block editor just constipates one’s efforts.
The whole set up seems so jittery. The box things popping up all over the place, the toolbar that slips about and disappears, it’s a distraction and a time waster.
You said it. I hope the powers be listen.
They won’t. They were told for months that there was consumer resistance but they didn’t care. Wonder how much it cost them? They must expect to recoup in advertising revenue or getting more professional paying sites.
Shit.
It’s here to stay.
😭😭
There is still the classic option in the settings and apparently it will be staying 💜 so , please don’t go !
The classic thingy is still a mess though. I don’t know why they had to make doing such simple things so difficult!
I really don’t understand it either! I switched last year and, touch wood, I am used to it now 💜
You must be more techy than I am. It just infuriates me having to spend time learning something I don’t need. Mind you, I’m the same with my phone. I don’t know how it works and haven’t been bothered finding out. If it makes phone calls that’s all I’m interested in 🙂
I can see your point of view completely but I found with a little perciverence it works well. I don’t do anything too ambitious with it and it’s fine 💜
I’m probably just lazy 🙂
No your not lazy
Yes I am. But I can be forced into action 🙂
💜
I meant, “you’re not lazy”
Justice for Jane!
Did you talk to the Support about it?
Nah. If I have to jump through hoops to get it to do something the old outdated editor used to do, I’m not interested.
You’ll suffer less in the long run.
I’ll just blog less poetry. It might push me into trying other outlets.
😦
I too find the block editor to be a pain as it makes the option to copy a previous post impossible it seems. However, you will need to work from your admin setting if you still want an editor that does not remind you of creating Frankenstein piece by piece.
Yes, that’s what I did at first, but it’s like going in the back door, and it’s also going back in time. If that option is open, it’s because the simplicity is what some people look for. WP seems hell bent on making things complicated.
They do seem to think complicated is better
I’m sure it’s a godsend for people wanting a flash platform for selling stuff.
But no I sell stuff and it is not all that helpful
Oh, then I don’t know who it’s aimed at. Must be someone who rakes in advertising revenue for WP anyway.
The whole thing seems designed for businesses, not writers…
I’m sure you’re right.
Wow! Never thought you could be so angry, and will find so harsh words. But i agree. Michael
It’s a pretty pathetic thing to get angry about really.
It was already getting to be a pain, but this block thing has made it worse. As you said, there should be the option to easily paste your poem from Word and upload a photo without going through all the nonsense.
If you look at the wp support doc there’s no mention of how you get simple things to work in the new editor. It’s as though they don’t care. Actually, they probably don’t.
No, they probably don’t. As you said, it’s probably for people who are doing it as business, who probably have Web designers anyway. I
Probably!
I agree, Jane! “The poem I published a few minutes ago had to be copied and pasted, stanza by stanza, each one in its own private little box” —- this is the most frustrating aspect for me. Photo uploading is glitchy and buggy now too — at least it has been for me lately.
I was told a great trick for copy/pasting from Word to the new editor. You copy as usual but instead of using command+v to paste you add shift to the key combination shift+command+v. It’s dead simple and not only do you get the poem exactly as it’s laid out in Word, but you don’t get the extra space between the lines.
The only problem is that the new editor won’t pick up italics or special symbols and you have to add those once you’ve pasted it into the post.
Thanks, Jane! 👍