[squid_ca]

I think this is a problem with "markdown-style" HTML editing in general. Sites that use it seem to think that using their special markup language is somehow easier for newbies to use than vanilla HTML, just because it doesn't have angle-brackets.

IMHO, markdown etc. solve one problem only: when you need to have text that is easily readable by humans, but can also be easily converted to HTML. In a content-entry situation, it just seems to solve the problem of saving keystrokes for people that already know HTML.

What I think average users really need is a WYSIWYG editor (which, I'll be the first to admit, is a real PITA for generating sane HTML).

[frandroid]

But Wikipedia has a really strict set of possible layouts, so actually, a WYSIWYG editor would make tons of sense, would probably be easy to create, and would generate really clean HTML.

[cwyers]

Markdown etc. solves another problem as well: HTML is a complicated system with multiple standards and different interpreters for that standard, which oh by the way most of them WILL parse certain parts of it as a Turing-complete programming language. There's a lot of reasons not to want untrusted users to be able to input HTML, which is why you may want to have users input a much safer language that you can convert to HTML.

[squid_ca]

That's a good point.

Serious idea: Maybe a WYSIWYG editor that generated markdown, which you could then submit to the server to parse as HTML?