I don't think I can make my point any clearer. I demonstrated that the bug I brought up four years ago still exists, that a separate file makes more sense, that people are more familiar with markdown, that existing tools (editors and sites like Github) already have very solid Markdown support. You've used the same argument multiple times: Markdown has multiple flavors. I get it, you don't like Markdown. You made that clear. But many others- myself included- *do* like Markdown, and want to be able to use it. Your arguments don't convince me that my desires are invalid.

I'm not opposed to Hackage supporting multiple flavors of README files (much like Github does). But I really dislike someone saying "you shouldn't be able to edit in the file format that you like, because I have an objection to it." If you don't like Markdown, don't use it. But please don't tell me "Haddock markup is sufficient, you should use that." If you're hearing that "Markdown is so strongly preferred," maybe you should accept that people prefer Markdown.

So my ideal is: Hackage chooses some Markdown implementation- I don't really care which too much- and adds support for README.md files. It can also add support for README.html, README.haddock, README.asciidoc, and README.klingon for all I care. If people run into problems because Github flavored Markdown is different than Hackage flavored Markdown... well, that's a situation that people using Markdown are used to already, and have come to terms with. I won't be put off by that. I already encounter that when I copy-paste something from a Stack Overflow answer into a Reddit comment. I can deal with it. People with objections to Markdown are perfectly free to use whatever syntax they want as well.

Michael