Poll: BBCodes or Markdown

Since we now have forums we've allowed some more formatting options. Formatting is currently done via BBCodes (Bulletin Board Codes), which are widely used in forums and are therefore rather well known.

One common alternative to BBCodes is Markdown . It is shorter (i.e. less typing) but usually there are less people familiar with it. Still, it's used by some major sites, including reddit.

We are thinking about switching to Markdown. It's just an idea for now and I'd like to get some feedback from you before we go any further.

EXAMPLES

Here are some of the BBCodes which we're currently using (the spaces inside the [brackets] are here only for demonstration:

[ i ]italics[/ i ]

becomes italics

[ b ]bold[/ b ]

becomes bold

[ u ]underline[/ u ]

becomes underline

[ s ]strikethrough[/ s ]

becomes strikethrough

[ url=http://example.com ]link[/ url ]

becomes link

And this is the same in Markdown:

*italics*

becomes italics

**bold**

becomes bold

_underline_

becomes underline

~~strikethrough~~

becomes strikethrough

[link](http://example.com)

becomes link

Those are not all codes currently available, there are some more complicated ones where the Markdown version becomes even shorter, for example lists: BBCode:

[ list ]
[ * ] item
[ * ] item
[ /list ]

Markdown:

* item
* item

So here's the question: Would you rather stick with BBCodes as we have them now or switch to Markdown? »»» VOTE HERE «««

Please note, that this has no influence on what kind of formattings is available. You will be able to use the same options, only different syntax. Also there are still a few visual bugs which we need to fix, but those are also not influenced by this choice.

I love Markdown, and this might be stating the obvious, but why not both? :)

Implementing Markdown (or at least a subset of the functionality) will always lead to positive surprises in my opinion. ("Cool! My bullet list got formatted automatically!") Getting rid of BBcode will break old messages and will be slightly inconvenient for people expecting BBcode to work on most (if not all) forum software.

Oh and great job on the forums so far, love the site!

Well, then I am the only one who doesn't like markdown... Most of the forums using BBCodes, then why we should have foreign markdown...Actually i have never heard about it..

~~I prefer BBCodes, but that may just be because I've used it for over 10 years.

Still, I can see why Markdown would be preferred. It's shorter, so it may save you a second for each post.~~

Edit: (06/09/15) I vote for Markdown instead : )

Thanks for your feedback so far.

Markdown isn't just shorter, it's also easier to learn and remember for newbies because it's much more along the formatting you'd naturally use in a pure text file. Of course that doesn't matter to veterans who have used BBCode for years, but that's not everybody. BBCode are really a quite horrible invention, some sort of almost-but-not-quite-HTML that emerged when some misguided security expert thought it would be a smart idea to replace <b> with [ b ]. That being said, since there are apparently a lot of people who still want to use it, we won't get rid of it for now. BBCodes are actually easier to parse then Markdown, so supporting them isn't that big of a problem.

I'm currently leaning towards additionally supporting some of the most basic Markdown features, something like bold, italics, links, images and non-nested lists. That way we can keep our implementation lightweight while providing maximum comfort for most use cases.

Feel free to leave further comments and vote if you haven't yet, we value your opinions. :)

MDMA Quotes are probably be only BBCodes since you rarely have to type those. Also you can already address users, as you can see. Check the current BBCode help page for our custom codes, those won't change.

I vote Markdown.

Using Markdown on Reddit is refreshing since it feels much easier and natural to use than BBcode, even though it has some weird requirements and behaviours (double linebreaks for a new line etc). People who have used italic or bold when writing email in Outlook will also already be familiar with the concept. Not to mention that I'm kinda tired of writing pseudo-HTML when conversing online.

Though I'll probably never remember if it is (text)[url] or text... :/

+1 for MD, or both

I don't know what is the layout of QWERTY keyboards but on AZERTY the [ ] symbols are available through AltGr modifier and it's very unpractical.

Markdown, please.

I'm actually going to do something that is not very common these days, and that is to change my opinion.

I originally voted for BBCodes, but I now realize that Markdown is probably the way to go. : )

+1 for Markdown <3

I vote and vouch for Markdown

+1 for Markdown

hey there

I'm quite comfortable with both, but if markdown is easier to use than +1 for markdown

Another for Markdown! I especially like the table syntax for that. ASCII art, that stuff.

I had to post, since the link didn't work (404).

Markdown looks and posts way better once you get to know the basics. The code is way easier, so I guess it's a win-win situation here. Go Markdown!

I vote Markdown. I wrote a huge skyrim modding tutorial in it awhile ago, it's quite fun to use.

Am I the only one scared of markdown? When I first saw bbcode I thought 'woah, so easy, cool', but markdown I don't like. Might change my ming if I actually try to use it.

I'm for BB but could get used to markdown

I vote for Markdown.

Alright, I'll go ahead and close this for now, thank you all for your feedback. Markdown was clearly favored here. Still it might be a little while before changes get implemented, because I'm busy as hell right now. ^^

I don't get it. Why not have a GUI instead, with common forum markups like bold, italics, text color, insert links, insert images, smilies, etc.?

Sorry I am a bit late to this discussion.

lezboyd A WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get) simply inserts the appropriate syntax. It doesn't have any influence on this decision. Also they are a pain to work with. You can either integrate an existing one (most of which have very annoying APIs) or write your own, which is quite a bit of work.