You could say that MediaWiki has a strange markup language, but it is workable because Wikipedia is so popular. MediaWiki is effectively the wiki standard. Anybody who has played with Wikipedia has encountered the syntax.
People still think mediawiki needs markup language, but you can also edit using wysiwyg. For hysterical raisins, english wikipedia has this feature turned off (but as an opt-in feature) , but eg the german wikipedia has this feature as an either-or option.
Here's the german wikipedia featured article in edit mode
Hang on a minute! Of course I can direct-link to english wikipedia editing too; here you go:
If you prefer english, here's a direct-link to editing todays front-page article on en.wikipedia. Once again, don't actually commit unless you're doing something useful. :-)