As for more DWIM, I wouldn't do any of the many "wiki" mark-up styles nor would I do POD [...] I think those three "simple" DWIM features would eliminate a sizable majority of the formatting mistakes here. There is a bit of a trick in how to decide whether to apply those features to a particular node.

I personally believe that (oh, ++, BTW!) one may reasonably argue that those three "simple" DWIM features could be considered a wiki-like markup language already. In fact they would make for a quick input method of formatted text.