I definitely want this.

I've been using <sup>\*</sup> and <sup>\*\*</sup> and so on in the text and a --- rule followed by <sub>\*</sub> at the end, and it sort of works, but:

• I want the footnotes to be smaller/less important-looking, but on many browsers, subscript text is too small, as Eugene Siedel's answer shows.
• This is clearly an abuse of <sub>'s semantic meaning.
• <sub> doesn't work in combination with some other kinds of formatting. Part of the reason I use asterisks instead of numbered footnotes is to remind myself that auto-numbered lists and <sub> don't work together.
• <sub> does work with embedded code, but it looks ugly on most browsers.^* And that definitely affects SO. I have brief bits of code in my footnotes all the time.
• It would be much nicer for the reader if the footnotes were hyperlinked. (I know, I shouldn't be writing answers so long that it really matters. But the time I would spend editing one of them down, I could write book-sized answers on three other interesting questions I've found. :)
• I frequently screw up the number of asterisks, which is one of the reasons I end up re-editing my answers too often and annoying other people.
• I still catch myself using the years-obsolete <super> instead of the HTML5 <sup> tag, although that's probably just a problem with me. But it's kind of annoying that it actually works on some browsers, so I don't always notice it…

_{* How does this look for you? In particular, does the embedded code cause the lines to be spaced for full-sized text, even though the embedded code, like the rest of the text, is not full-sized?}

I definitely want this.

I've been using <sup>\*</sup> and <sup>\*\*</sup> and so on in the text and a --- rule followed by <sub>\*</sub> at the end, and it sort of works, but:

• I want the footnotes to be smaller/less important-looking, but on many browsers, subscript text is too small, as Eugene Siedel's answer shows.
• This is clearly an abuse of <sub>'s semantic meaning.
• <sub> doesn't work in combination with some other kinds of formatting. Part of the reason I use asterisks instead of numbered footnotes is to remind myself that auto-numbered lists and <sub> don't work together.
• <sub> does work with embedded code, but it looks ugly on most browsers.^* And that definitely affects SO. I have brief bits of code in my footnotes all the time.
• It would be much nicer for the reader if the footnotes were hyperlinked. (I know, I shouldn't be writing answers so long that it really matters. But the time I would spend editing one of them down, I could write book-sized answers on three other interesting questions I've found. :)
• I frequently screw up the number of asterisks, which is one of the reasons I end up re-editing my answers too often and annoying other people.
• I still catch myself using the years-obsolete <super> instead of the HTML5 <sup> tag, although that's probably just a problem with me. But it's kind of annoying that it actually works on some browsers, so I don't always notice it…

_{* How does this look for you? In particular, does the embedded code cause the lines to be spaced for full-sized text, even though the embedded code, like the rest of the text, is not full-sized?}