Wiki

I dislike wikis. I fundamentally disagree with the conceit that their markup is easier to learn than HTML. I dislike how wikis leave people stuck in a markup backwater. Except for code: I quite like wikis in code.

Simple HTML is <p>, <h1>…<h5>, <img>, <b>, <i>, <ul>, <ol>, and <li>. That is all. All the simple parts of any wiki are the same as the simple bits of HTML. With near-universal HTML5 support we can even ignore the boiler plate, and just work with the simple elements alone. The elements are just extra bits of grammar that everyone is familiar with: commas, parenthesis, and the capitol-letter and full-stop combo that is used in English.

Even complex things, such as templates, become easy in HTML when you use the right tools. MediaWiki templates, by contrast, are a frightening collection of {{different [[brackets]] and | characters}} that put TCL to shame.

 If a person learns a wiki they are stuck with simplistic tools that cannot express what the author wants. With HTML we can add extra elements like video, CSS, and hypertext far more naturally than with any wiki. In my experience there is a plateau of complexity with HTML that occurs far sooner than with wikis.

There is one point that I will concede: when the markup is actually expected to be read as text then using a wiki markup provides a consistent look to the text. For this reason wiki-markup works well in code; I have a soft-spot for Sphinx, and I occasionally wonder what it would be like to code in WEB.