Agree. And for that reason, I'm perfectly ok with the basic system here. Like you, I only need a few basic HTML commands to do what I need to do around here.
Given that this forum has a larger, and more active membership than perhaps any political forum on the internet, would it even be wise to change the basic layout, or functions? If I were the owner, I'd have to study the ramifications of doing that with a fairly serious analysis before committing to it.
This system has a long legacy and changing it in any radical way would be very destabilizing. And there is no purely information/communications reason to change much.
Even embedding videos is not necessary in that any video on youtube, for example, is only one click away through an URL that the reply editor will format for you without HTML. You can always post a pic with your link if you want to show the opening screen.
I see no real *reason* to change things drastically. There are a lot of details I'd change but I'm sure others would like them to remain the same so - there you have it.