I don't think anyone would argue that having buttons on an textarea for commonly used actions is a problem in any way - I personally hate having th type out log tags like blockquote multiple times where spelling errors can cause problems.
As for actual wysiwyg, it depends on the implementation, and the thing here is if its not tightly coupled with the software, it shows. A dual mode like in wordpress could be interesting, however I have visited fora (using invision power board I think) where there is some sort of hybrid mode where test was as in wysiwyg, but new additions could be made through adding more tags too.
