by forwardslash

Markdown is a double edged sword in online commenting. It is so ubiquititous in popular community sites that it is expected to be used but it can be fragmented in what is used from the spec and how it is implemented. At hubski we use a small subset of the markdown spec with our own customizations (such as shout-outs). Normally I would use an appropriate library for parsing markdown and be done with it, but unfortunately no one has written one that I know of.