The key quote from Mark’s post, was "This is a feature people won’t miss if it’s not there, but will complain about if it only half-meets their needs."

Having been involved with this on projects as small as a perl script to as large as Windows95 this is a big human-factors problem. Coming from a user-education and instructional design background this is the area I’m best able to address coherently. (Others are way better able to discuss the substantial coding issues, program management practices, and release-management concerns.)

A truism in documentation is that users need a positive first five minute experience with a new software feature, and that after six weeks almost no one will start using a feature they overlooked or dismissed earlier. If something like moving blocks or adding columns doesn’t “work” for someone right away they’re likely to dismiss it — even if they don’t reject it out of hand the “later” in “I’ll try that again later” rarely materializes.

I agree with Mark that an initial release with the four or five major blocks for writing with the writing flow clearly worked out would have been the way to go. Then roll out new blocks (with a little “try it” fanfare) when they’re ready. Even assuming the workflow was smooth (and the WPTavern folks, and Joost, and Mark, and I, and too many others agree it’s not) coughing out a bunch of half-baked blocks including “Hello Dolly” fluff like the Drop Caps block, is going to leave people going either
- Wait, how’s that supposed to work? or
- Wait, it’s broken

You don’t want that in any new-product rollout. Just because something like Gutenberg is way overdue doesn't mean it needs to be rushed. The team's been making very good progress -- there have been huge improvements in the last six weeks! If they could maintain the pace I'd expect things will be looking very good in January.

As someone with a lot of experience in training and support as well as sales I'd much rather see it released with a splash all at once instead of dribbled out in two-week "ok, try it now" increments.