Unescaped asterisks can cause markdown text to be misinterpreted. Also
syntax highlighters (e.g. in sublime text) freak out.

References: [markdown
spec](https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#em)

closes #7821

See: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/import/gemnasium.html

closes #7387

http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/socialweb/XGR-socialweb-20101206/
https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~uhengart/publications/gis10.pdf
http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/152497/01main.pdf
http://www.amazon.com/Privacy-Aware-Knowledge-Discovery-Applications-Techniques/dp/143980365X

* Drop remaining links to the Github wiki
* Redirect Mailing list links through the wiki
* Update links that are redirects
* enable syntaxhighlighting