As mentioned, WordPress.com users got this horrible and unacceptable new editor. But many active community members did revolt against the changes here in a very long forum thread.
Many people were afraid and asked if the classic editor would be removed anytime in the future but we just got unclear answers. It took 32 pages to get a clear answer and WordPress staff Rootjosh answered the question:
Just to clarify a question that has been asked and answered in a number of places (but can be hard to find given the breadth of this discussion):
We have no plans to permanently remove the classic editor from the dashboard, but our goal is to improve the new editor in a way that users will prefer it over the classic one.
It seems that they don´t want to remove the classic editor. However, “we have no plans” sounds still pretty vague and could at the same time mean “We have no plans, but it might happen”. Yet I think that they really don´t consider to remove the good old editor and I hope this is true because otherwise I would probably leave this community because as a blogger I need the tools to create content and a downgraded editor like the new one is not enough for this job.
But at the end of the page 32 in the mentioned thread, another WordPress staff member came along again to tell everybody that the thread will be closed:
Last night, we pushed out some major updates to the new editor that should resolve some of the larger concerns like saving and previewing(…)
As a result, we’re going to be closing this thread so we can move to more one-on-one interactions. We greatly appreciate all of the feedback you have provided here. I’ll be opening a thread with certain individuals that are having ongoing issues (I’ll drop a note here).
If you have future bug reports or issues, please start a new thread!
This is indeed a shame and an impertinence. It shows a lot of egoism. They are clearly afraid to find more critique. They just want to push things forward and it looks like they see critics as troublemakers. Closing the thread of community concerns, that is pretty embarrassing for company of this size, even if they offer an excuse that they want to talk about the things in separate threads. It´s still an ugly behaviour and this should be mentioned loud.
But the whole issue is a big one and it is no wonder that closing the thread won´t help them because many people have still concerns about the new editor. They at least offered us the solution to pick the old classic editor after we loaded the new one and clicked on “Switch to classic mode”. But the problem is that it is stored locally via cookies and not server-side and this means once you delete your cookies (A lot of people do this regularly), the new editor will appear again. People demand to have this option stored as server-side setting as you can find out in this thread. Also, if you pick one of your articles in your blog and if you click on “edit” below the article, the new editor will open, even if you did choose to use the classic editor and this makes it hard to manage the own blog, which is why there is a separate thread about this issue here as well.
Supporter macmanx answered the concerns about the cookie solution and it seems he understood why it is better to let people save it via server-side settings:
Ok, I just confirmed that the switch does not work for custom domains. A new bug has been filed (pleading for a standard setting, not a cookie), and I’ll now duck behind something to avoid thrown objects.
It seems that the request is forwarded to the developers and I hope we will get the option to make our choice permanently saved on the server-side and not via cookies. This would end the trouble for many people who have concerns about the new editor because they simply could activate the classic editor forever or could switch between both if they wanted to. This is also the reason why so many people didn´t understand why this feature was not planned earlier.
However, if things work out well then I will be really thankful that our community is so strong and not afraid to mentioned concerns. Those who were annoyed by the new editor could finally start to create articles again. I am one of them. If I was silent over the last days, the new editor was one of the biggest reasons for it. I couldn´t bear to work with the new editor and the extra clicks to access the old one, that was a no go too. I just hope that I finally can come back to enjoy one of my great hobbies. Blogging!
I never had much concerns about wordpress.com until they came up with the new editor. I was pretty happy here. But there were reasons why I was so happy. The classic editor was at least one of the reasons why I prefered this platform over all others. If it would go away, I am pretty much sure that I would seek for alternatives. I don´t want to think about this scenario now as it seems that we maybe get solutions soon, that´s what I hope.
Diary of Dennis 
[ Smiles ] Dennis, I prefer the classic version of the editor.
Apparently, whomever designed the new editor lacked vision and didn’t test the darn thing before they launched it.
I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of the “Happy Engineers” because a lot of dissatisfied bloggers are going to take out their anger on them for that new version of the editor.
Good point. As a supported you would just hear “Go tell them, there is no backward..:”. I saw that some supporters had to put up with a lot in the threads. Some people reminded that it´s not their fault, it´s the company as a whole. However, I think a lot of people just showed their frustration. It´s hard for both. We can´t know who made the decision to come up with a new editor while the classic editor is nearly as perfect. It´s maybe that even the developers just got the order to create something new. Would be nice to know how much intern people disliked the idea as well 😀
Hello Dennis,
I agree that The Battle Of Beep Beep Boop topic should not have been closed like that, and I was disappointed by that as well.
Supposedly the system will remember your choice of editor now on the server side according to this sticky topic at the at the WordPress.com Forums that I recommend that you subscribe to 😉 :
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/new-post-editor-improvements?replies=7
Thank you for sharing this post. 🙂
-John Jr
Hey John.
No, I do think this is still remembered via cookies. I use CCleaner to remove all cookies regularly. I did that today too and noticed I will see the new editor again even if I did choose the classic editor before. It only remembers as long as I don´t remove cookies. This is a huge problem in my opinion.
Hello Dennis,
You are correct/right, I just tested it this morning and it still took me to the new editor, I have my browsers set to private mode (I used to use CCleaner 😉 ); and so cookies/et cetera are cleared when I exit the browser.
Why in the world would they handle this by cookie in the first place or even now, knowing that this does not and will not work for some/many of us?
I guess it is another warning sign that the dashboard editor might not survive, among other things, like a confusing lack of common sense it seems; but maybe they will change this eventually hopefully because this is annoying.
It is also annoying that The Battle Of Beep Beep Boop topic is closed and that the new editor update topic is closed to comments, and so you can not even let them know that it is not working without having to open a new topic or joining someone else’s topic who has reported this.
Do they even test these updates or ask people to help them test them before posting them in the update topic thinking that they are fixed/working? 😀
Thank you for replying Dennis. 🙂
-John Jr
True, they just don´t want to hear our voices and that is a shame. I was a WordPress fanatic and would have suggested anybody to blog here or self-hosted with WordPress installed because there are some great things going on in our community and our tool set worked well too, until they developed the new tools.
I also do expect everything to happen. But one thing is sure, if they remove the classic editor, I will be away because I won´t support it. As a blogger I must work with it and there is a reason why I came here. There were alternative content managment systems like Drupal, Jomlaa and so on. Or even other blog services as Google Blogger. But I came here because after testing I was quite happy with the usability here.
If the classic editor will be removed, I will seek for a good hosting service and install my own WordPress software so that I have control about how I want to blog.
Hello Dennis,
I hope that if they do remove the Dashboard editor in the future, that the new editor will hopefully be functional enough so that we can avoid leaving WordPress.com, but we will see/find out in the future.
Back when Windows Live Spaces was around, I used to have my blog there, several people and I predicted that Microsoft was close to canceling Windows Live Spaces after we noticed various warning signs like: new features not being added during the Wave/whatever updates, features being taken away, general stagnation, we noticed warning signs in the Microsoft Forums, et cetera.
The Microsoft employees in the forums told us something like: “There are currently no plans to cancel Windows Live Spaces” or something like that, but we knew better and like we predicted Microsoft canceled Windows Live Spaces a few months later in the exact time frame/period of time that I predicted; and so I moved my blog to WordPress.com because they gave us that option, and it seemed like the best choice out of the few other blog services that I tried back then.
Anyway, we will see what happens, and I hope that you have shared your suggestions/feedback/bug reports with WordPress.com at the forums; and I hope that they will at least follow enough of those suggestions/fix most of those bugs to where/so that the new editor will become at least usable for people like us.
My strategy is to expect/prepare for the worst 😀 😉 ; but I recommend that people keep giving feedback/making bug reports in the hope that this situation will improve enough to be bearable/tolerable.
Unfortunately, I will possibly just quit blogging if the situation at WordPress.com gets too bad (the situation has been getting worse over the last few years, with many strange decisions and many bugs, and many of the bugs that I have reported still have not been fixed because they are considered Low Priority), since/because I really only blog out of habit/addiction/et cetera at this time so I do not really see the point/purpose of me trying to self-host or move to another blogging platform/service unless it is really great/good or something like that compared to WordPress.com. 😦
Thank you for replying Dennis 🙂 ,
-John Jr
Absolutely. I would as well prefer to save the pains of moving my blog. But I would go so far if nothing helps because I did this with other projects several times too and after one or two days work it was basically just setting some things up and import all data. However, as you, I hope that they make the new editor functional and improve it a lot, in case they want to get rid of the old one.
About Microsoft… “There are currently no plans to cancel Windows Live Spaces”. Yes, I read a lot in it. That´s exactly what I thought when I have read “We have currently no plans to remove the classic editor” by Automattic. The word “currently” makes the whole sentence sound open ending. Statements like this one make a lot of people happy because it sounds like “We won´t do it”. But I rather read between the lines. Here in Germany we have internet providers who sell internet connections with the slogal “We offer you up to 16 Mbit/s”. Yes… “up to” could also mean 4 Mbit/s of speed. If you go to law, you will lose because they never stated that you would get 16 Mbit´s of speed for sure. Nice marketing tricks. I think this is “business speak”… don´t say too much and if so, let it sound vague and ambiguous.
I have been active in the major threads about the issue with the new editor because it is very importan for me too. I am here since 6 years, soon 7 years, and so far it worked out well for me. Until now with the new editor that slowed my publishing interval pretty much down, which is why I did mention my concerns in the forums.
Thank you too for the nice discussion.
Hello Dennis,
Yes, Business Speak is a good way to describe it, well done. 😉
Good, I am glad that you are doing your part to help improve this situation as well, and now it is up to WordPress to do their part while we hope for the best while expecting the worse/worst and preparing for it. 😉
You are welcome and thank you, it is rare that I get to/get the chance to have back and forth conversations on WordPress.com, and I am really enjoying our discussions as well. 🙂
-John Jr
I know what you mean. There are quite a lot of bloggers who either don´t even answer comments or those who just reply with something like “Thank you for commenting”.
Fortunately there are also people who like discussions. There is only one chance that I wouldn´t reply to a comment… it´s when the person does not add anything to the subject that I could answer. Or insults but I would delete insults anyway. 😀
Just a small tip… not meant to offend you… 🙂 In the settings I activated 3 levels deep nested commenting. Two comment after the initial comment, you maybe noticed that there is no “reply” anymore. But anyway you can scroll up to the third comment of this talk and there is a reply button. If you reply there, you´re comment will be under the actual discussion and easier to read for others. 🙂 Just in case you find other blogs with 3 levels deep nested commenting. You can still place the comment directly under the related comment, you just need to find the last reply button in this discussion. 🙂
Yeah, that is one of the reasons that I rarely comment or help out as much at the forums because most people do not even reply when I comment on their blogs or help them at the forums, and some bloggers (bloggers who you try to support) will reply sometimes but then ignore you and your blog completely at other times even when it is relevant and when you are helping them; and so I often avoid wasting my time commenting now-a-days.
No offense taken but I do hope that I did this correctly, I moved up two comments to your comment that had a reply option, and I am replying there since there is no reply on the last two comments because of how the settings are set; and so hopefully I did it correctly, I knew about this limitation, but I did not want reply in another thread that was not related but hopefully I followed your advice correctly. (Please do let me know if I failed 😀 ) 😉
I have my setting set to 4 Levels Deep, because I like to have an even/balanced number of replies among other things (you will probably notice that many things on my blog are set to even numbers, especially the number 4, in my widgets/blog title/more tag/et cetera 😉 ) , *cough* *OCD* *cough* 😀 .
-John Jr
Same here. I am also much more of a publisher than someone who comments anywhere else. But it still happens. Found some interesting blogs to follow where I have at times discussions. I know some bloggers who get so many comments that they simply can´t answer anyone anymore. In this case I would understand it. I believe if your post gets viral and if you get thousands of comments, then it is not that easy anymore. But this is a special case I´d say.
Yes this time your comment is right under the related discussion. 🙂 You did it right. In the past I scratched my head if I shoulnd´t go back to allow more levels to comments but I disliked that the comment would be at some point pretty tiny and hard to read. Maybe I should experiment with 5 instead of 3 levels deep. This shouldn´t make the last comments too tiny. I will test this some day. Your 4 levels could be a compromise too. I will check that out soon and see if this works for me as well 🙂
I agree with you about the comments. 😉
Thank you Dennis for teaching me about the special Reply Trick, and good luck with your experiment. 🙂
-John Jr
You are welcome 🙂
Speaking of Google Blogger, is it just me or does it somewhat seem that/like Google Blogger has been pretty stagnate, and it seems that it could be at risk of being canceled by Google like various other Google services that have been canceled recently? 😀
-John Jr
Not sure about this. I still know some people who prefer to blog there. I think this is a matter of taste. I think Blogger is still a big thing too. Never noticed that Google mentioned anything and I read tech news a lot. But as you said, users who are active over there might see first signals earlier. Same as we notice things here too. Don´t know what´s happening over there. I have an inactive blog there but I gave up on the blog because I prefer the software here.
I have an inactive blog there as well because I also prefer blogging on WordPress.com, but it just seems/looks like not much have changed there in years and they do not seem to be trying to compete with their competitors like WordPress.com/et cetera; but I could be wrong. 😉
-John Jr