Alternate wiki-implementations: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 23:52, 6 November 2003

Currently 3 out of 20 of our registered users are registered MediaWiki developers, which makes our percentage of developers among users 15%, which is likely the highest figure any public MediaWiki installation can boost so that is an good incentive to try to adapt MediaWiki for our use over other wikis. However they might just be here because we are using MediaWiki, so, it is important to make clear that one of the things the R&D Wiki is doing is choosing what technology best fits our hardware requirements later.

There are three leading candidates, and a few dark horses listed afterwards.

MediaWiki	TikiWiki	MoinMoin
Not humanly possible for end user feedback to reach developers reliably PHP based Proven to perform well under heavy load - but with hard limits Most likely basis for wikitext standard Working now for R&D purposes Dedicated developer community which also mostly develops content Readable documentation, thanks to the above A very high ratio of developers (15% of registered users) registered in consumerium supports MySQL only	Not humanly possible for end user feedback to reach developers at all - form for describing wiki feature request incomprehensible even to a usability guru PHP based meets many standards (CSS, XHTML, pear.php.net, smarty.php.net, RDF email/forums (and integration) built-in Group management built-in chat support intended Visualization of wiki-links Polls built in Many developers doing lots of detail work on CM and CMS supports Postgres, Oracle, Sybase and SQLite (built in PHP 5.0!) databases not just MySQL - strategic to integrate with some essential projects developers eat their own dog food = run current beta as their live site for all development, so any problem is immediately obvious to every developer	End user feedback directly solicited in a public wiki Python language excellent architecture making extensibility very simple easy to write parsers to meet wikitext standard or read MediaWiki or TikiWiki formats troll in the logo no need for any SQL - relies on Unix file system only - fewer glitches, fewer reports (most of which are turned off in the heavy-load wikis anyway)

Others include VeryQuickWiki (a Java wiki), UseMod (only advantage is that it dumps XML output, very very very important until there is a real wikitext standard).

See also:

@@ Line 17: / Line 17: @@
 *Readable documentation, thanks to the above
 *A very high ratio of developers (15% of registered users) registered in [[consumerium]]
-*supports SQL only
+*supports [[MySQL]] only
 </td>
 <td>
-*Not humanly possible for [[end user feedback]] to reach developers at all - form for describing [[wiki feature request]] incomprehensible even to gurus.
+*Not humanly possible for [[end user feedback]] to reach developers at all - form for describing [[wiki feature request]] incomprehensible even to a [[usability guru]]
 *PHP based
 *meets ''many'' standards ([[CSS]], [[XHTML]], [[pear.php.net]], [[smarty.php.net]], [[RDF]]
@@ Line 29: / Line 29: @@
 *Polls built in
 *Many developers doing lots of detail work on CM and CMS
-*supports Postgres, Oracle, Sybase and SQLite (built in PHP 5.0!) databases not just MySQL - strategic to integrate with some [[essential projects]]
+*supports Postgres, Oracle, Sybase and [[SQLite]] (built in PHP 5.0!) databases not just MySQL - strategic to integrate with some [[essential projects]]
 *developers [[eat their own dog food]] = run current beta as their live site for all development, so any problem is immediately obvious to every developer
 </td>
@@ Line 38: / Line 38: @@
 *easy to write parsers to meet [[wikitext standard]] or read [[MediaWiki]] or [[TikiWiki]] formats
 *[[troll]] in the logo
-*no need for SQL
+*no need for *any* SQL - relies on [[Unix file system]] only - fewer glitches, fewer reports (most of which are turned off in the heavy-load wikis anyway)
 </td>
 </tr>