Oh my god yes. nano, moe, and JOE are more lightweight than vim, and have better ergonomics. I can understand setting $EDITOR to nvi, mg, or similar, but setting it to vim is ridiculous: Vim is in Emacs's weight class.
The worst is when someone who's never used Vi before gets thrown in there after running, eg, 'git commit'. Can't Google how to quit because they don't even know the name of the program!