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.