Cimorene

I've seen cases of both. Some people, yeah, they're noobs. And some people, yeah, they really think fanfic is better with lots and lots of rape scenes, cutting, anorexia... and lots of ascii art decorations, varying font size for emphasis, random capitalisation, and use of line breaks to indicate mood. And some people are noobs and model themselves on the first fanfic they see, which is by the people who think fanfic is better with etc etc etc.

It's not just formatting, either. With truly appalling fanfic, there are also lapses in spelling, grammar, and, well, critical thinking skills, e.g. sentences with no object, or no verb, or both, where it looks like it's just not that the author just forgot to type the word, so much as that she forgot what she was writing in mid-sentence.