Talk:Markdown

Capiche.com article

Wikipedia (editing) newb here. I hope I'm doing this the right way.

In https://capiche.com/e/markdown-history we can learn:

Aaron Swartz (RIP) created the foundation. Then John Gruber built on this to create the Markdown language as we know it today.

Thus: I propose that we change "Developed by John Gruber (in collaboration with Aaron Swartz on the syntax)" to "Developed by John Gruber and Aaron Swartz". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mofstres (talk • contribs) 00:55, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

The existing sources such as this gave a different story, which none of your edits agree with. Rather than revise the history, citing points to change, with the corresponding reliable source is the way to go. TEDickey (talk) 07:56, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't see anything in the arronsw.com link that disputes Swartz co-creating the Markdown markup language. That page says that Swartz and Gruber collaborated on the syntax. While Gruber developed a Perl implementation of the language, the language itself was jointly developed by both individuals. Swartz's co-creation is confirmed by these reliable sources, which I have added to the article:

• Hendler, James (10 November 2022). "Foreword by James Hendler". Aaron Swartz’s A Programmable Web: An Unfinished Work (PDF). Springer Nature Switzerland. pp. ix. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-79444-5 – via Wikisource. This document was originally produced in "markdown" format, a simplified HTML/Wiki format that Aaron co-designed with John Gruber ca. 2004.
• Krewinkel, Albert; Winkler, Robert (8 May 2017). "Formatting Open Science: agilely creating multiple document formats for academic manuscripts with Pandoc Scholar" (PDF). PeerJ Computer Science. p. 6. doi:10.7717/peerj-cs.112. Archived from the original on December 2, 2017. Markdown was originally developed by John Gruber in collaboration with Aaron Swartz, with the goal to simplify the writing of HTML documents{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)

— Newslinger talk 03:55, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to consider Krewinkel&Winkler a reliable source on the topic (they simply link to the original Markdown post), and Hendler seems to be parroting the same folklore started by Aaron himself.

Gruber himself has dismissed this claim, and calls it entirely incorrect.

Quoting for those who dislike Twitter:

TJ Luoma: Interested to see you refer to @gruber as “Markdown co-creator John Gruber”*. Who is the other?

John Grubber: Probably referring to Aaron Swartz, whom Wikipedia incorrectly credited as co-creator for years.

iA: Incorrectly? What was his involvement then? We’ll correct that on the spot.

John Grubber: I should write about it, but it’s painful. More or less: Aaron was my sounding board, my muse.

And later:

John Grubber: He was instrumental, but not a co-creator

All other sources published on the subject lead back to the same single page on either Aaron Swartz's website, or John Grubber's contemporary claims, so layering on more sources does not grant the claim greater veracity. As Aaron has no mention in the original Markdown post, and there is little evidence of any contribution to the early implementations beside his own claims, the current lede that marks them as equal co-creators is too strong.

I'm switching to the language Krewinkel&Winkler use, "in collaboration with", but I think it's worth considering he shouldn't be fully credited in the lede at all, but rather discussed in the history section. He certainly doesn't belong in the "Developed by" sidebar credit as he performed no development and that isn't disputed.

Nickelpro (talk) 06:08, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Oh and just to head off the inevitable WP:NOR discussion, this is clearly about if WP:SPS is applicable here or not. As effectively all other sources rely on one of the two self-published sources, either Swartz or Gruber (or, immensely frustratingly, this article), and Swartz's source doesn't directly contradict any of Grubber's claims, there's no reason not to elevate Gruber's narrative as the one presented in Wikipedia's voice.

But because I know that isn't enough, here have a smattering of random papers from a text search of IEEE that say John Gruber invented Markdown with no mention of Swartz:

• Bleiel, Nicky (2016). "Collaborating in GitHub". 2016 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference (IPCC). IEEE. pp. 1–3. doi:10.1109/IPCC.2016.7740497.. "Markdown was originally developed in 2004 by John Gruber, and has splintered into different variations"
• Štaka, Zorana; Vujović, Vladimir; Vuković, Milica; Milinković, Snježana (2023). "Model-Driven Engineering in the Role of Markup Languages". 22nd International Symposium INFOTEH-JAHORINA (INFOTEH). IEEE. pp. 1–6. doi:10.1109/INFOTEH57020.2023.10094142.. "In 2004, Markdown was developed by John Gruber as a simple markup language with a focus on readability and simplicity of use."
• Liu, Chen; Suo, Zhihai; Mao, Qi; Zhu, Ying (2023). "Practice and Application of Wiki Open Source Document Platform Based on Vue". 3rd International Symposium on Computer Technology and Information Science (ISCTIS). IEEE. pp. 819–822. doi:10.1109/ISCTIS58954.2023.10213203.. "Created by John Gruber in 2004, Markdown is now one of the world’s most popular markup languages."

Which hopefully puts that debate to bed, but I cannot emphasize enough how many articles cite Wikipedia as their source for who developed markdown, so the well is thoroughly poisoned here.

Nickelpro (talk) 07:24, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

I agree that this is mostly citogenesis from the wikipedia article. I posted the links below to Talk:Aaron Swartz#Was Aaron the creator of Markdown?

John Gruber has stated on multiple occasions over the last decade that he is the sole creator:

> 2014: I am Markdown’s sole creator, not co-creator. I assume, you’re thinking of Aaron Swartz, whose feedback was instrumental...

> 2014: A huge help. My muse. And sole beta tester/feedback giver. But he wasn’t a co-creator.

> 2016: Probably referring to Aaron Swartz, whom Wikipedia incorrectly credited as co-creator for years.

> 2023: Wikipedia is wrong on that. I created Markdown. Aaron was my original muse and beta tester. He was a friend and his feedback was remarkably helpful, but he was not co-creator.

Would support changes to all of the articles that note Gruber as the creator and Swartz as an early collaborator. I disagree with the user there that these WP:ABOUTSELF quotes are "unduly self-serving" but have not followed up.

PK-WIKI (talk) 19:30, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

If we took WP:ABOUTSELF at face value, then no one invented Markdown. All sources lead back to Gruber and Swartz, and unfortunately the only living soul who knows exactly the nature of their conversations is John Gruber.

I agree with your assessment that there's nothing unduly self-serving about Gruber's reporting here, if anything he is deferential. Also, saying "I invented X" is absolutely not a claim about a third party in the intent of WP:ABOUTSELF.

I'll look into changing the wording of this article to something more appropriate, although anyone should feel free to beat me to it. I also support changes to any other articles that raise the subject.

Nickelpro (talk) 00:52, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Tools

Tools list should be added, because it's handy for people, interested in Markdown. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.92.31.29 (talk) 15:43, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Youtube Markdown variant?

I'm pretty sure that Youtube has a variant of Markdown on it's site. It's system works just like Markdown with a few exceptions:

• YouTube uses only one pair of asterisks for bold instead of two. *like this* but not **like this**
• only bold, italics, underline, and strikethrough is allowed.

Maybe we should mention YouTube in the article? beepborp (talk) 18:31, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

That's not Markdown, though. It's more like Slack and Whatsapp syntax mentioned in lightweight markup language. — Christoph Päper 08:38, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia Markdown?

What is the relationship between editing Wikipedia and using Markdown? Can that be noted herein with a link to the Wikipedia syntax? Jimgettman (talk) 17:44, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

@Jimgettman: Wikipedia's syntax is not Markdown, but instead MediaWiki markup. There is a comparison in the Lightweight markup language article. I don't know that we need a mention here, since Wikipedia doesn't use Markdown. - Dyork (talk) 23:35, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

principiante

no tengo ni la menor idea que es un repositorio mucho menos se como crear uno, todo empezo cuando quise agarrar un curso para aprender sobre computacion me pidieron que instalara prcharm y de ahi surgio mi aventura y tuve mas dicho tengo muchos problemas para instalar pycharm en mi chromebook ingresos comandos en la terminal pero de ahi ya no se que hacer, 2601:201:4200:CA20:4DE5:9B22:5EAF:5577 (talk) 03:14, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Technical Writing

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 30 August 2023 and 7 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): BCMisc (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by BCMisc (talk) 22:49, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Move MFM to the Variants section

Perhaps Misskey-flavored Markdown should be in the Variants section due to how much it extends the standard spec, iirc is not 100% compatible (for example links are autodetected) with it and is of a pretty notable significance for the couple hundred thousand users of the microblogging platforms that support it? Sladniebieskiego (talk) 07:33, 24 April 2024 (UTC)