Colin,
I'm not going to get in a big debate here. I am not sure what you meant by web versions work, just not the way you and I might like (to paraphrase). So, I will elaborate on my experience.
Most people that have been using JDE prior to the 8.11 releases assume that web versions function just like standard versions in terms of promotions, OT's and design. Typical business users that developed versions in previous versions expect that they will function just like standard versions - only created thru the web interface. When they find out that there is a complicated conversion process to regular versions in order to do OT and design functions, they are not happy. My experience has been, that these people think to themselves "Gosh, I wish I would have just created the regular version with the developer client like I did before".
I would also say that the conversion process, as was documented by Candi Sholes, doesn't work like the document says. Our experience was that nearly all of the web-only versions could not be maintained like standard versions after the conversion.