Quote Originally Posted by Waddacku View Post
It took me a while to find it again, but I think the bit I was thinking about is in DMG2, p. 82: "Is there a chance that a really good idea could completely trump your skill challenge? Don't fret! That's a good thing."
There's more relevant context around, and to be fair it doesn't specifically call out ending it early, but...

In general I'd recommend anyone interested in the ongoing discussion here to read the DMG2 on skill challenges. The initiative thing is gone already by then, of course, because it's stupid and no one likes it, but besides the touch-ups to the rules it also has a ton more discussion and advice than DMG1 offers, and I would argue it makes it clear that the straitjacket interpretation of the rules is not intended, but that it's a structure for the DM to embellish as they see fit.
Power and ritual use is also furthered strengthened on p. 86. DMG1 mentions utility power and rituals enabling alternative skill uses and granting bonuses, but also rituals in particular granting an automatic successes or removing failures (DMG1 p. 74). DMG2 goes so far as saying relevant ritual or daily power usage deserves at least 1 automatic success. It also introduces the rule of thumb to treat non-skill use (powers, resource expenditures, for instance) as secondary skills in terms of benefits gained from them.
To argue a slightly different point, DMG1 came out June 6th 2008. DMG2 came out September 19th 2009 one year and three months later. Wizards of the Coast was already no stranger to the idea of errata, one year was plenty of time to clarify things if the straightjacket approach wasn't intended, but on the contrary if it was and if there was enough pushback against it (like you acknowledge for the initiative part already) a new DMG trying to make the new products sell better is a great opportunity to say "haha no that was just people reading it wrong promise" especially when all it really costs is a few lines of text on something people will buy. It doesn't admit any fault, it doesn't look like backing down, and it's getting released in a full product so people have to pay to even get it.

If it was their intent and just miscommunicated that badly in the original then that's pretty much half the point of errata. It's there to fix things that are broken or to clarify things that were unclear, a complete 180 in how to approach creative player solutions is absolutely the kind of thing you'd want to immediately get some errata on then follow up with reinforcing the correction later instead of letting it sit for a year. Trying to drop something that isn't well received on the other hand is the kind of admission of fault that most people would be hesitant to draw attention to, much less release an outright "we were wrong or we said this wrong" via errata when it's much easier to just change later and rely on the fact that people tend to just buy the newest version of something anyway so DMs and players coming in might end up never even seeing the original take on it.