[asadotzler]

maybe, but it absolutely won't happen, so why bother suggesting it?

[_heimdall]

Why won't it happen? If everyone agrees that what we have isn't right and will only get worse, are we supposed to march down that path anyway?

[persolb]

I think it’s mostly the ‘everybody agree’ part. There are millions worth of years of effort pit into today’s webpages.

A more likely successful path is to standardize markdown links, and just let browsers start showing markdown natively. Throw in a simple optional style sheet for good measure.