The thing I like about markdown is that it's very readable as just a raw format. With the bonus that it's easily converted to HTML. But it doesn't need to be converted to HTML.

I guess this sort of falls under the "But I hate the syntax" section of the article, but I don't think it quite gets the point. I can look at a Markdown file and read or write it without even really thinking. Which is not really the case with rST (or even HTML, for that matter).