I have a naive question re the FDL discussions. If Wikipedia is "open content" under the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL) and special Wikipedia add-on license, do you also provide a full specification of the text format you use? For example, the specification that says that ''this is italics'', that [[foo]] is a link to article Foo and that [[foo|bar]] is a link to Foo that displays as "bar"? And the specification that says ISBN:0-13-080360-X is to be interpreted as an ISBN number with links to online bookstores.

In my own wiki website, I have modified the format and included new rules. If I were to release my wiki-website's content under FDL, would I also have to include a full specification of the format I use? Does the GNU FDL require this? Sorry, I haven't read it.

One of my added rules is that sys:411 is to be interpreted as a link to product number 411 in the catalog of the Swedish Alcohol Monopoly System. (This is almost as useful as ISBN numbers. Everybody who writes about wine or liqueur will use them as reference.) Another rule is that linux:ls(1) is to be interpreted as a link to the Linux manual page for the command "ls" in section 1 of the manual. I also have an openbsd:ls(1) version, for fairness.

Contributors to my wiki learn some of these rules and use them. But if I only release the content as is, it would be really hard to guess exactly what is what. It would be fair to say that the content would be useless without the format specification.

Will people volunteer their contributions to an open content project that doesn't publish its full format specifications?