At ETech in San Francisco, I met with Ross Mayfield of Socialtext, and we discussed the idea that there should be a central core set of standard wiki syntax. Ross was quite keen on the concept.
Standard syntax is important for the entire wiki world so that as people become more accustomed to using wikis for all kinds of things, they can feel comfortable on a variety of platforms.
It seems natural to me that as the largest wiki project (and we are probably the wiki engine with the most installations, although I have no actual way of knowing that), we should take a leadership role in this.
http://www.socialtext.net/mayfield/index.cgi?action=refcard&login=user42...
is a quick 'refcard' on the syntax of socialtext.
I propose that we set up a group of people either in a mailing list or a wiki or both, and invite representatives from all the major wiki software projects and companies to participate in a syntax standard.
I don't know anything about how formal standards are proposed and decided, but just as with HTML, it seems that wiki syntax is a natural for some standardization.
--Jimbo