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18 points jMyles | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.215s | source

The two things I wish mediawiki had:

* APIs with deeper functional inroads in multiple languages. There are lots of great tools for writing bots, but if you want to write a parser extension, you're stuck with PHP right? Or has that changed?

* Multiplayer. Edit conflicts can be a real pain and turnoff for beginner users. I wish that simultaneous use felt more like a collaborative social experience and less like a minefield.

...but I do think mediawiki is wonderful, and I'm inclined to use it despite these drawbacks.

1. aborsy ◴[] No.45072438[source]
I spent some time searching for a good wiki a few months ago.

It depends on your use case. The simplest and oldest wiki might be Docuwiki. There is no database, and organization is based on text files in folders. You can make decent wikis with it, but it’s minimalist and can be hard for the users to use it.

Then we have enterprise solutions for collaboration by Microsoft, Google, Atlassian, etc. They can’t be used in our workplace, due to organization policy.

I went with Bookstack for a wiki to be used by a group of people. The interface and fonts are pretty, it’s super fast, installation is easy, and automatic updates have been problem free so far. The content must be organized in terms of shelves/books/chapters/pages, but some people want any number of categories and titles. It doesn’t allow a lot of customization, but the choices made are OK.

Mediawiki is complex, and takes more time to administer. It could make sense for large number of users. I stopped using it after upgrades broke the installation a few times, and, frankly, the interface looks outdated to me in most themes, and needs customization which takes time. Obviously, it’s very customizable, there are tons of resources and we know it can scale to billions of people!