Jason Calcanis claims that Wikipedia’s complex markup language is designed to limit participation. I agree that Wikipedia markup functions to limit participation, but I do not agree that it is consciously designed to do so. Rather it is an unfortunate consequence of a markup language completely unconstrained by standards, which makes it very powerful and flexible for “insiders” but discourages the development of tools and systems which might make it easier to use for “outsiders.” The lack of standardization in wiki markup also means that users can’t transfer what they’ve learned from other wiki systems, such as the ones they might have running on their company intranets.

In response to Jason’s critique, some people have floated the idea of creating a WYSIWYG Wikipedia editor. This is a good idea in theory, but in practice it would be quite difficult to keep such a tool up-to-date, as Wikipedia markup is a moving target. Much of the complexity Calcanis cites is due to complex macros that various people have added to handle things like citations. These macros are constantly under revision, and new ones are always being added. Tracking these changes in a editing tool would be a serious pain in the ass.