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In other words, what one would write naturally, without even know what Markdown is! Markdown is actually a very popular markup language used by most (my own estimate) FLOSS projects as the format for README files.
For this reason, I propose that opt-in Markdown support is enabled. It should be disabled by default (at least for now) so that users are not affected unless they want to.
This very popular phpBB plugin implements Markdown support: https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/extension/markdown/
I think Markdown would improve the average formatting of posts by making posters more efficient because:
- For keyboard-heavy users, it reduces the number of characters that have to be typed. Bold: from 7 characters, 3 of which distinct (b,[,],/) to 4 of the same (*); Italic, from 7 characters, 3 of which distinct (i,[,],/) to 2 of the same (*); urls, from 12 characters, 7 of which distinct (u,r,l,[,=,],/) to 4 characters, 4 of which distinct ([,],(,)); inline code blocks, from 13 characters, 7 of which distinct (c,o,d,e,[,],/) to 6 characters of the same (`); and what I said about lists also applies (you can count the characters for it )
- For people who use the mouse to click on the toolbar buttons, it eliminates the need to do it (since it takes less to just use Markdown). Not moving one hand away from the keyboard obviously increases average typing speed!
- Many people here are used to writing Markdown already
- The extension allows BBcode and Markdown to coexist, in any case!