I'm not a huge fan of the current Markdown mark. I'd encourage the creator (dcurtis) to push it, because currently it feels like a first-stage idea — or perhaps, an execution without an idea at all.
There are many questions — "What is Markdown?", for starters — that feel unaddressed by the mark. Instead, we get the brute force approach: splitting up the word into smaller word parts, which is what you do with a word if you don't know what it means, or you have to gesture it in Charades.
Rather uninspiring for an idea so beautiful that Jeff and others can get so excited just thinking about it, but what else can you expect from such a mark whose approach is so stubbornly literal? I take that back — only one word part actually gets to be represented literally... the other only managed to become a letter, in a moment I can only imagine involved the creator muttering "good enough". He must have found this mark uninspiring as well, given that he sought to put a box around it.
At least consider that the down arrow on its own is an overloaded concept, particularly on the web. Without context — and a mark should not need context — M↓ could read like a hotkey or command of some kind. This kind of ambiguity is utterly unnecessary — you're making a mark; it can be whatever you want it to be. Push!
There are many questions — "What is Markdown?", for starters — that feel unaddressed by the mark. Instead, we get the brute force approach: splitting up the word into smaller word parts, which is what you do with a word if you don't know what it means, or you have to gesture it in Charades.
Rather uninspiring for an idea so beautiful that Jeff and others can get so excited just thinking about it, but what else can you expect from such a mark whose approach is so stubbornly literal? I take that back — only one word part actually gets to be represented literally... the other only managed to become a letter, in a moment I can only imagine involved the creator muttering "good enough". He must have found this mark uninspiring as well, given that he sought to put a box around it.
At least consider that the down arrow on its own is an overloaded concept, particularly on the web. Without context — and a mark should not need context — M↓ could read like a hotkey or command of some kind. This kind of ambiguity is utterly unnecessary — you're making a mark; it can be whatever you want it to be. Push!