Standard/common mark up language for user provided content?

Question

I suppose this might be similar to this question, but I'm wondering if there's a standard/popular mark up language for wiki and similar style user provided content. With the proliferation of different mark up syntaxes out there it seems like one would be a defacto one to implement. There appears to have been at least one group that wanted to create a standard (and an RFC for it), but they appear to have fizzled out around mid-2005.

So does anybody know what the standard/most popular one is? If there isn't one, what's the easiest for users but has a good flexibility for advanced users?

Answer 1

Markdown is popular in some circles. In addition to the original version in Perl, there's a C version called Discount and several other implementations including one in Lua.

There's a list of lightweight markup languages here.

Answer 2

No standard that I know of.

I'd say the most popular (well, in the projects I tend to follow at least) seems to tend towards Markdown and Textile these days.

It's often a matter of preference. My preference goes to Markdown but there wouldn't be that much to argue about if someone preferred another markup.