I’ve collaborated on a wiki or two in my life. It struck me as being somehow more rewarding than “regular” HTML.
Doesn’t make sense, I know. Perhaps it’s the [square brackets]? I remember back somewhere in 1991, writing up whole reams of hypertext, for no-one’s pleasure or use except my own. I remember writing all that stuff in WordPerfect (of course) and some DOS program that actually created hyperlinks by inserting [bracketed] text.
There were weird, meandering stories. Bits and pieces of hinted-at esoterica. Highly involved film scripts with incredibly detailed back stories, carefully crafted to parallel late 19th century and early 20th century pseudohistory.
Things like the Moose Department, the Albania for King Zog Committee, the Voynich Manuscript, C.Q. Necrovore, fossilized coprolites, hermetic early medieval monastic orders–ah, those were the days.