Thing is - I honestly believe that even for simple XML, it's still making more complicated code than the alternatives. We've got XML for all sorts of stuff - like config and API calls - it works well enough, although I would agree that for most, JSON or YAML are better (depending on precise circumstance).

The root of the problem I think is indeed - that people _don't_ read the doc, they just see "Simple" and install that and start hacking away