[FFML] A thought on the future of the FFML

[Michael Clark]

> 
> I was using this formatting technique just this week,
> on a forum freshly installed (with the latest version of
> the forum's software) earlier this year.  IIRC, it's also
> the basic standard in cases like Wikipedia and
> TVTropes, which have become quite relevant to current
> online norms (at least, to the community of interest to
> us).
> 
> It does not appear to me that what I propose is in fact
> archaic.  Perhaps others can chime in as to whether
> this is still modern and widely used?

Yeah, there are lots of places that absolutely do not want a full set of
HTML to be used and thus use some other markup language to help restrict
that.  On a mailing list, I view full HTML as *less* problematic than I
do on any potential forum or other interface, as each email is more or
less independent of the others, while posts on a forum could wreak havoc
on the entire display of a site if permitted to use full-on HTML.

With that in mind, if a parallel forum-like site is in consideration (or
really any other kind of parallel site), I don't think making HTML the
list's standard is a good idea.  It may seem unappealing for the list to
use its own markup system, but that's common practice with no clearly
superior alternative, as far as I am aware.