This is a proposal by [[ChristophSauer]] and [[ChuckSmith]]:

During the [[WikiSym]] workshop, after we decided that a double asterisk would be best for bold, the group decided "unanimous minus two" that the hyphen would be best for bullet lists. However, at this point, ChuckSmith realized due to his research of wiki syntaxes that approximately 90% of wiki engines use asterisks for bullet lists. After the initial desigh [[Creole 0.1]] with hyphens we decided mainly because of that to use asterisk for unnumbered lists as well, see the [[Talk.Lists]] for the story. We now have to concede that we made a mistake and accept the use of asterisk instead of hyphens for bullet lists.  

It has become obvious by the [[RequireSpaceAfterBulletProposal]] that the intuition of the group at the WikiSym workshop was right, that using asterisk for both bold and unnumbered lists would create difficulties in implementing parsers, especially parsers that are based on regular expressions (see [[CommonWikiParsingTechniques]]). You will find code examples that show those problems in the [[BoldAndListsAmbiguity]] page.

Considering the facts behind 25% of list items on Wikipedia not using space after the star **and** 25% of lists have items starting with italics or bold[1], this combination is not an [[EdgeCase]]. This means that proposals like [[RequireSpaceAfterBulletProposal]] would make it more difficult to use Creole than necessary. Proposals like this are a sign that something in the design is wrong and accepting this probosal would only cure a symptom. That's why we ask the comunity to accept this new proposal to switch back to the original design on using hyphens for unnumbered lists.

{{{
- item 1
- item 2
-- **item 2.1**
--item 2.2
- item 3
}}}

Note that we do not require a space after the hyphens. 

== Disadvantages

* not as frequently used as asterisk in existing wiki markup variants
* ambiguities with other use of hypens as first characters in a line:
** horizontal lines 
** common use of two dashes for signatures.
** common use of double-hyphen to indicate m-dash in text. (there's a distinction between [[hyphens and dashes]])

== Advantages

* no [[BoldAndListsAmbiguity]], therefore easier to implement
* usually the first guess of endusers, (look into your mailbox for the usage of lists, see [[Line Break Case Studies]])
* looks better (why have we put so much thought into avoiding {{{''''}}} when we now introduce a similar root of confusion {{{* **}}} )
* hyphens are easy to type (usually easier than asterisk)
* hardly any collisions with existing markup
* not new (see PukiWiki, SnipSnap, XWiki)


=== Ambiguities Resolution

In the following section we will show solutions for the abiguities already discussed on the [[Talk.Lists]] page involved with hyphens. Opposed to the //bold as the first formatting in a list item//, we consider these combinations as root for ambiguities as [[EdgeCases]].

==== Horizontal Lines and Signatures

In general a unnumbered list alway has to start with **one** hyphen.
Horizontal rules are on a line by themselves. One could check for four ore more hyphens with nothing else behind it (only space and line break).
{{{
----
}}}

The same is true for signatures.
{{{
-- HomerSimpson, 21-Feb-2007
}}}

Please use the [[ListsAndHorizontalLinesSingaturesAmbiguity]] page to discuss the issues and solutions.

==== Using Minus as first Char in Lines

This is an [[EdgeCase]]. For those cases we should introduce a general escape Character other than space [[]], because we want to allow spaces in front of lists.

{{{
   5
- 10
====
- 5
}}}

This example shows that using a character like a hyphen as a first char has actually the same problem as using
a equal sign as the first character. While we do not loose a word about the headings so far there has been 
concerns about minus as a first character (see [[Talk.Lists]]). Both have to be handled anyway. Therefore we would like to suggest general escape character other than space, see [[EscapeCharacterProposal]].

{{{
   5
~- 10
~====
~- 5
}}}

If we would use space as a escape character we would not be able to allow space in front of lists for example anymore.


[#1] Chuck, please add a reference here (source where you get the number of bold usage in wikipedia from)