[Snip wiki markup versus HTML example]
Also, our own wiki markup gives us a better chance of producing the
/correct/ HTML -- which in this case is <em>, not <i> at all. ^_^ -- Toby
Another reason for preferring the more compact and simpler wiki markup whenever possible is that HTML might not always be our target format for display. E.g. I wrote a very simplistic Wiki markup to PDF script, announced here http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-December/008768.html. (It currently chucks more-or-less everything inside HTML tags as there don't appear to be any HTML->TeX converters around that support anything beyond HTML 2.0)
Pete / User:Pcb21