BoostN For those people, a very simple visual editor (extension) should exist. Something that simply automatically applies markdown to the post so they can see in the live editor (which should display automatically IMO) what is causing it to bold, italic, etc.
Simple stuff like
- Bold
- Italic
- Bullet Point
- Horizontal Line
and that's it. Other stuff like strikethrough, Headers, etc should be reserved for those to are interested in learning markdown (since they apparently want increased control over formatting)