I think the author&#x27;s right on one point, and very wrong on the other.<p>For the majority of the population, a Markdown editor, much as <i>I</i> would like it (if only because I&#x27;d not get frustrated by Reddit&#x27;s _italic_ vs. HN&#x27;s <i></i>stars<i></i>) would be confusing.  WYSIWYG or WSYWYM editors with <i>structural</i> elements (headers, italics, quotes) would be better.<p>But I also don&#x27;t think this has any place in the <i>web client</i>.  Which has, frankly, come to do too much, poorly, and with vast gaping deficiencies in privacy and security.<p>I&#x27;d far rather, say, that Pocket were my browser.  A tool I could use, organise various modes of Web use, <i>strip away almost all site formatting</i>, and, in something that it doesn&#x27;t now have, present me with an editor.<p>Which would be a simple GUI WYSIWYM tool by default, but could be swapped out for <i>the user&#x27;s choice</i> of alternate editor <i>and markup language</i> (within reason).<p>For me, vim and Markdown.  For others, well, whatever idiotic tools you like (that&#x27;s a joke, boys and girls).  But that&#x27;s the point:  to fit <i>your</i> working preferences.<p>The site could specify its <i>submission</i> format (which ought be something <i>like</i> Markdown, or a very simplified HTML subset), but <i>that</i> could be handled through conversion engines (see Pandoc for an excellent one).<p>Your initial submission would be maintained in state client-side (and, optionally, replicated to your private or dying-unicorn Cloud provider, Github repo, etc.).<p>But typing into tiny little text-boxes, with any stray keyboard or mouse move sending me skittering off into oblivion?  Fix that shine, to apply some fundamental word substitutions.