Wiki

[Greg Taylor]

On Saturday June 25 2005 9:54 pm, Corey Burger wrote:
> On 6/25/05, Henrik Nilsen Omma <henrik at canonical.com> wrote:
> > Corey Burger wrote:
> > >I dispute that, and also state the main reason it was not considered
> > >was due to it being PHP.
> >
> > I wouldn't say that's true. I was quite involved in making the decision
> > to move and highly involved in planning the move. The issue of PHP was
> > never really raised. We consider the MoinMoin wiki itself to be an
> > outstanding system with many great features.
> >
> > Obviously Python  is a favored language in our organisation, but that is
> > not just about security issues. It is a language that many of the Ubuntu
> > devels know very well and they can therefore write extensions easily, do
> > code review and make it inter-operate with our existing infrastructure.
> > This is how the authentication system for existing users was developed.
> >
> > I'm sure there are issues that can be improved with the usability of
> > Moin, but simply saying that everything is better in MediaWiki is not
> > helpful and not correct. If you really want to see something
> > implemented, I suggest to submit a 'Feature Request' to the Moin site
> > (many of the things you mention are not really bugs.)
> > http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/FeatureRequests Try to provide as much
> > detail as possible.
> >
> > Btw: the two other wikis I admin are MediaWikis, which I've chosen at
> > the time because I like the system. I have had issues with it though,
> > both security related and database corruption. Having used Moin for some
> > time now, I'd say it's just as powerful (but we'll disagree on that I
> > suppose).
>
> MoinMoin may be wonderful under the covers, and Mediawiki may be crap,
> but what really matters to me is the user interface and features.
>
> >From a feature point of view, Mediawiki does beat the pants off of
>
> MoinMoin. Especially those features that are used in making
> presentation ready documents.
>
> MoinMoin is designed to be a techical users wiki and Mediaiwiki is
> not. That difference of focus shows throughout the interface.
>
> I am not trying to be harsh about Moin, I am merely trying to provide
> the best experience for the Documentation team and other users.
>
> Corey
As much as I hate to open my mouth where it's not needed, I would have to say 
that I agree that MediaWiki is definitely a nice system and arguably much 
better suited for the role of heavily trafficked Wiki. The reasons that I 
personally think this:

- MediaWiki produces much more attractive, organized documents. An example of 
this is the indexes that are automatically created near the top of pages from 
headers and subnested headers. I can easily make a huge Wiki page and still 
allow for easy navigation within it.

- I'm really bothered that I can't edit just a portion of a page (a certain 
section/header) and risk submitting conflicting changes on active pages. It's 
not hard when you have someone sitting in an IRC room because you can ask 
them if they're editing the page and see when they're done, but when some 
random guy is updating things like mad on a certain page you're trying to 
work on, ugh.

- I've found MediaWiki to be a lot easier to manage. I can quickly manipulate 
categories, move pages, modify templates, namespaces, and other things. 
Rollbacks and revision history is easy to work with and I everything is in an 
easy to reach location.

- On the topic of code, MediaWikis power some massive, well-traveled sites and 
the codebase is mature and tested. The code is somewhat harder to read than 
Moin's due to language differences, but I honestly have had little need to 
modify much in the Wikis I've worked with.

- I may be wrong here, but I haven't been able to find a 'Discussion' 
functionality for wiki pages. This allows users to talk about a page on a 
seperate wiki page without spamming the target for discussion with crap on 
the bottom. This was a huge turnoff for me since not everyone who works on 
the Wiki sits in the IRC room where coordinating things are easy.

I can appreciate that Ubuntu is all about using a common language for 
developmental tasks, but consider the fact that the users don't care what's 
powering something as long as it works :) The thing I've found about 
MediaWiki is that once it's running and setup, it just runs. It needs minimal 
babying, you don't have to really do any actual maintenance other than 
watching pages, and the content is often attractive even with the most borish 
of pages. While it is nice that the current Wiki integrates into the theme of 
the rest of the Ubuntu pages, again, I don't think the users care so much 
about looks, content is the clincher.

Moin does have its perks such as the fact that it looks to run really freaking 
fast, which MediaWiki doesn't do without caching and other goodies. It is 
also less cluttered in some areas, which can make things easier on the users.

So in summation, I think the new wiki is a hundred times better than the old 
one, but it's still young and somewhat immature as far as features go. I'd 
like to see talk pages and some MediaWiki style section/indexes.

I'm basing my opinions on the MediaWiki sites I regularly use or contribute 
to:
http://learn.clemsonlinux.org
http://docs.btmux.com
http://mediawiki.org

I also keep a private one for my college notes, it works extremely well!
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