Jim Higson wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:
#*#*:# who would write this awful wikitext?
<list type="indent">
note that ":" is not "indent", but rather a definition list, i.e. <dl>, <dt> and <dd> in html. compare:
; term : definition ; term 2 : definition 2 : definition without term
the use of : for indentation is a side-effect of how definition lists are generally rendered in browsers.
kate.