I’m more like a future oriented guy 
My users are very ordinary common people using mobiles. Just guiding them how to make a simple table was an awful task, because — sorry — markdown is far away user friendly. But let’s not discuss about that topic, but it is a reason why I never teached how to use images in tables. Escaping as a concept is totally unfamiliar, even scary, to them and if I tell them there is another thing among quite many they just must remember… well, it is better simple say they can’t use images.
But if I understood right that fixed editing issue, but need to escape pipe-marks is still there.