Steve Callaway wrote:
It occurs to me that there is going to be an awful lot of reworking if we ever do go to an XML format Wikipedia (and this definitely needs discussion at some point soon). I would have said that HTML is a more generally accepted standard and that Wiki formatting is a highly localised phenomenon. You can do a lot more with HTML format than you ever can with Wiki formatting.
Au contraire. The beauty of Wiki Markup is that is is independent of what is sent to the browser. When XML finally (!) hits the road, all it will take is a few tweaks to the script so '' is converted to a different tag instead of <I>, and we can go on writing wiki markup as before. If anything, XML is another reason for preferring wiki markup to HTML. Another good reason, from http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyWikiWorks, is:
It's an intelligence test of sorts to be able to edit a wiki page.
It's not rocket science, but it doesn't appeal to the VideoAddicts http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?VideoAddicts. If it doesn't appeal, they don't participate, which leaves those of us who read and write to get on with rational discourse.