In regards to item #3 in your list, I believe you are missing my point. By merely clicking a button (Advanced Editing) you are presented with the excerpt field. I personally believe that it is wrong to expect the “average” user to understand that in order for that “feature” to actually work, he/she has to find “The Loop” and modify the code to get the feature to work properly. If a feature is offered by default, as this one is, then it should work by default (correctly & w/o further file modification).
Could you please direct me to another software application where this same procedure is expected in order to get a feature working correctly, because I honestly cannot think of one.