That statement is nothing special, both Markdown and asciidoc claim to be a formalisation of the plain text conventions you already use. IMHO most of the alternatives mentioned in this comment thread understand their goals and the design space well enough, and many are definitive improvements over Creole's MediaWiki-inspired, committee-designed syntax. They also win in featurefulness (Markdown and Textile have html embedding, asciidoc and ReST have extension mechanisms), which is important for a wiki.
Re:Why Markdown Is Not My Favourite Language
by vidarh on Saturday April 27, 2013 @05:24AM
(#5617272)
For me, the reason is that Creole (and formats like it), feels like markup. Writing Markdown feels like writing text.
I was used to most of the conventions from Markdown mostly as-is from writing plain text for a couple of decades before I first saw Markdown.
Whenever I come across Creole-style formats, I cringe - it means I need to think about the markup instead of think about just writing.
Can you explain to me why wiki markup is universally reviled?
I find Creole to be great text markup. It feels really natural to use and it expresses the intended meaning whether it's rendered using HTML or displayed in plain text. I really like this statement by Christoph Sauer on the Creole website: http://wikicreole.org/wiki/ChristophSauer
I agree that Creole or any other formatting markup is not going to solve everyone's problems. However, I think that whenever Markdown is a good choice, Creole is a better one.