For the record Clifford Adams and I invented the [[free link]] syntax that will plague humanity for a century. We did this on MeatballWiki specifically by request of and to solve the problem for Wikipedia when they were on UseModWiki.
It’s a small world. The more you know.
Also I have enjoyed listening to people complain about our [[creation]] for decades.
The camel-casing was offputting. I don't know if Wikipedia would be where it is today if you guys hadn't come up with the [[free link]] system that made everything far more readable. Thanks :)
Why not [blah](bloo)? Why not __floo flah__? There’s always some other idea that people want to argue.
We had reasons. We already had clean syntax for [https://uri text description] and [https://uri] for numbered citations as footnotes and [#anchor] for named anchors that fit this format of square brackets for everything.
The double square brackets made it clear the inner tokens were not to be parsed at all but were the link itself. Plus they are fast to type and very easy to identify (they look like a [[button]]) and read cleanly as part of a sentence.
It’s a small world. The more you know.
Also I have enjoyed listening to people complain about our [[creation]] for decades.