Tab Refactoring

This wiki has always used leading tabs as part of the markup for bullet lists. Early results from the AnnoyingWikiFeatureVote indicate that reduced dependence on tab characters is long overdue. We have now made multiple asterisks at the beginning of a line to be synonymous with as many tabs before one asterisk. The change is effective immediately. [ThankYouWard.]

When the change was implemented, many pages already had lines beginning with asterisks. Here are the sorts of things they were used for, along with suggestions for how to fix them if necessary:

Intended bullets that weren't bullets until now (no change)
Enclosing asterisks used for emphasis (changed to bold or italic)
Leading asterisks in the EditCopy only (no change)
Three asterisks used as separator in the style of Alexander (indent)
Many asterisks used as horizontal rule (replace with horizontal rule)
C code listings, especially close comments (indent)
Wildcard character used when talking about file formats (replace *.wav with .wav)
Leading asterisk(s) used as a footnote - I put parens around them, like (**) -- DougKing

There is no similar mechanism for indenting numbered lists.

Perhaps *: could be used as a syntax for block quotes?

nb:

This line starts with **, but gives a strange monospaced result (if preceded by a monospaced line, as is the case here)

compared with this line, which starts with a single *.

*But who cares?

I would really like to see something similar done with ":".

RecentChanges is still added in the old form to the respective files. Will you change this please, Ward?