Wikimedia Bugzilla is closed!

Absolutely not.  ''' is bold and '' is italic, not strong and emphasized.  It is
absolutely the *opposite* of the intent of semantic markup to add semantic
meaning where the user didn't input any.  Please reflect on this.  <b> and <i>
are not deprecated because they happen to consist of those particular letters;
they're deprecated because they're nonsemantic.  Nonsemantic markup is what's
discouraged.  If you think we should encourage our *users* to input semantic
markup, please think of ways to do so and write up a proposal, but <b> !=
<strong> and the latter should never be used when you mean the former.

As an illustration of the faultiness of this particular suggestion, and the
broader idea it represents, it should be noted that these used to translate to
<strong> and <em> until people using screen readers complained that every book
title and ship name got emphasized by their reader.  Screen readers emphasize
<strong> and <em> but not <b> and <i>, so <i>Pride and Prejudice</i> is less
ideal than <cite>Pride and Prejudice</cite> but much better than the downright
incorrect <em>Pride and Prejudice</em>.