I would like an auto-break feature as well. Maybe something like on /. where you can choose HTML formatted or plain text (the plain text autobreaks but still allows links and things like bold and italic)

However I'm not sure ranting about it is the right way to get such a feature implemented. I mean if you want to complain about hypocrisy, complain about people who flame the newbies rather than trying to point them in the right direction, that's hypocrisy since someone at some point probably helped them. A technical issue is not hypocrisy, in fact I'm willing to bet that it most people find it to be a feature, and it probably also saves the server on processing power.

As for the HTML parsing with regexes: It is a fact that a regex cannot catch all possible valid HTML, however a true parser can and there are parsers availiable. Just like every other suggestion for a module on this site suggesting an HTML parser is done to save the user time from re-inventing a wheel. This is consistant, use the right tool for the job.