I'd much rather see a drop-down that lets the user select the format they were writing, and "Classic PM" would be one of the options, along with Markdown, and maybe WSYIWYG. The default would come from user settings. The database table would consist of "ContentType" and "Content", and ContentType would select the rendering module which converts it to HTML,

(or anything else, like XML)

I strongly feel this is the "right way" to handle it.

I had that in mind, too, but lacked the time to write it down. Having a "Classic PM" renderer would allow copying all content nodes from the existing PerlMonks to PM 2.0 in source form, no conversion needed, no complex interaction between PM 1.0 servers and PM 2.0 servers needed. Once all data is migrated to PM 2.0, PM 1.0 can be shut down.

Looking at very old nodes, it might perhaps be useful to have an "Ancient PM" renderer in addition to the "Classic PM" renderer, because obviously the PM approved HTML subset has changed over time. But having just the "Classic PM" renderer would already be a great migration helper.

Alexander