I have just learned about a module called Markdown, which will hopefully be a good compromise for those who wish writing html were more like writing a wiki. Unfortunately the Markdown markup is not the same as that used in the Sakai wiki, but it still saves a lot of keystrokes over writing the full html.
So, here are some of the things you can do.
Bulletted list. Start lines with + - or *. I'm not sure about *, because that is also supposed to handle bold. Maybe the difference is the space.