Jan.Hidders wrote:
Was it a conscious decision? I got the impressions the early software didn't filter out HTML so people used it and now we are stuck with it.
That's more or less right. There was a discussion, but really, the code is the law.
Apart from the big technical advantages I still feel that having a simple HTML-free mark-up language is necessary to keep Wikipedia accessible for newcomers. Having lots of complicated HTML that is not very WYSIWIG makes editing harder. This inevitably means that you cannot do a lot of fancy lay-out things, but I believe that is not a bug but a feature.
My grasp of the consensus (but maybe I am misremembering... perhaps this is just my grasp of my own opinion!) is that going out of our way to be HTML-free is not a good thing, but that not allowing the many html-nightmares is a good thing.
For example, many many many people, not just programmers, understand how to make html <b>bold</b> and <i>italics</i>. Those are intuitive and harmless. The original Ward Cunningham wiki solution of ' and '' and ''' for different things, well, that was never very intuitive and newcomers didn't know about it.
Supporting some html tags, familiar and harmless ones, seems like a good idea.
Of course, at this point, we do have an established userbase of writers, some of whom are known to us as regulars, but lots and lots of whom may only show up once every month to write a little bit. I think we have a duty not to change anything in a way that will astonish them.
--Jimbo