I am just noticing that when we reviewed these proposals a while back, this one never got updated [even as the corresponding one on DBAs did](https://dba.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/934/please-can-we-have-markdown-tables-on-dba-se/966#966). tl;dr: Implementing this in a way that wouldn't allow authors to break some / all page layouts, whether inadvertently or maliciously, is not feasible. I know. It sucks. But that's HTML tables for ya. ###See also: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5017/markdown-footnotes