It’s a very good idea to use GitHub wikis, and I don’t want to detract from 
that *in the slightest.*

However, I can’t help but observe the irony of such wikis running GitHub’s 
customized Markdown. In some sense, it’s the “least standard” Markdown in 
common use:

1. No HTML allowed
2. Line breaks are never ignored
3. Plain hyperlinks (no angle brackets) are always hyperlinked
4. Extra syntax has been added, such as [[wiki]] notation and github-specific 
entity shortcodes

Interestingly enough, those modifications are pretty great ones.

#1 is a reasonable trade-off when the public is contributing code (although a 
good XSS scrubber works too)
#2 makes Markdown less confusing for most people.
#3 similarly is what anyone would really expect (when’s the last time you saw a 
URL you couldn’t click?)
Regarding #4, wiki syntax is a must on a wiki, and the other features of 
Markdown on GH make sense on GH, too.

So in a way, a GitHub wiki might prod us to keep thinking about more ways 
Markdown can be used, and perhaps even start thinking about adopting #2 and #3 
in a hypothetical Markdown 2.0, and making wiki syntax an officially available 
option…

Or not.

</rambling>

Alan Hogan

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