Posted by jpluimers on 2026/08/27
I edited an answer to [Wayback/Archive] git – View rendered output of a gist? – Stack Overflow¹ and it appears that Stack Overflow / Stack Exchange have introduced a WYSIWYG editor of which the help still points to the old Markdown editor.
The problem is that the new WYSIWYG editor generates Markdown that in part cannot be properly rendered by the Markdown question / answer viewer (for instance, strikethrough is emitted as by the WYSIWYG editor in Markdown as ˜˜strikethrough˜˜ but the viewer can only render <s>strikethrough</s>.
Since their meta sites are toxic as hell:
is there anyone that knows where to find the source code of the Stack Overflow / Stack Exchange WYSIWYG editor?
Thanks!
From the links below, I doubt the StackExchange pagedown repository is the one as it has been unmaintained since 2012 and the WYSIWYG editor is still in beta: I would have expected bug fixes over time, but there aren’t. Or maybe that all is caused by the toxicity on their platform?
This was my queste for information and some of the links I found:
It appears that when posting on Opinion-based questions, we are now forced to use the WYSIWY(D)G (don’t) editor; the posts don’t respect the Enable new editor preference.
In addition to this, it appears that the WYSIWY(D)G editor will always default to the rich-text editor. If you change to Markdown (with preview) mode, and then post a new reply, or edit the one you just posted, it will return to rich-text editor.
This is not limited to opinions based questions, as it behaves the same for my answer and for:
Hopefully you have resolved Why do “Best Practices” question NOT default to my normal Markdown Mode? (I lost 1/2 an answer) as well. Losing answers is no okay.
Queries as part of the queste:
Note that the day after editing the answer in the first link at the top of the post, something at Stack Overflow / Stack Exchange changed so now the WYSIWYG editor suddenly did have a button to switch back to the Markdown editor and I could manually fix the strikethrough problems. See the [Wayback/Archive] Revisions to View rendered output of a gist? – Stack Overflow
[Wayback/Archive] 570463378-282320af-e732-4292-b505-62f5ff972b8c.png (643×47)
Oh, when bumping into the issue, I didn’t even have the WYSIWYG feature turned on as I was not aware the feature had been introduced – it also shows how infrequently I add/edit data there (and how wrong it is from Stack Overflow / Stack Exchange to enable the WYSIWYG editor on their sites even if it is turned off in your profile):
[Wayback/Archive] 570457963-f92b0155-5dfb-4b48-b0e5-ab61c8777fe4.png (533×183)
Preferences
Interface
--jeroen
¹ as a result I posted a table of tests of how github renderers fail/succeed with gists in my earlier blog post Sweep the Strait: Minesweeper, but in the Straitt of Hormuz (plus some tests with RawGit alternatives).
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
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