I searched for some list of available things and couldn't find it. Edit: ah, so \works\ works. And bold? -strikethrough-? I need a place to look this stuff up! well, you can't escape asterisks that I see. #* /*
Having done some development over the time myself, I find [markdown](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/) really easy to learn (and learn). On top of that, it's also widely used. So user's don't have to re-learn a new syntax. Additionally, I would say, stay away from JavaScript WYSIWYG editors. From my experience, they are not yet that usable. I have to say though, they have been enormously improving over the last ten years. And maybe there is one that's working better than what I am used to. But given that the allowed set of markup will most likely be small, there is not a lot which speaks in favor of WYSIWYG editors.
BTW, I assume you are referring to the dailydot article. That was spun quite a bit that way... I'm not gunning for Reddit. Some of the things I have done here have been influenced by issue I had at Reddit. But I have a deep respect for that site. I had some very good times there. I went to the Rally for Sanity because of that site.