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#1 2006-11-08 16:44:40

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

Hey all,

There's been a lot of interest in the idea of converting mediawiki to docuwiki for our wiki backend. There are several reasons for this, not all of which I am familiar with. I'd appreciate it if people could search google to get a good appreciation of the costs and benefits, and post their educated opinions here.

Thanks,
Dusty

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#2 2006-11-08 17:04:08

Romashka
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Registered: 2005-12-07
Posts: 1,054

Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

tardo has made DokuWiki install and migrated few pages to it.
See Pacman page and part of category list shown for example.


to live is to die

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#3 2006-11-08 17:11:37

PJ
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2005-10-11
Posts: 602

Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

In case someone don't know about this site which compares features between diffrent wiki engines.
http://www.wikimatrix.org/compare/DokuWiki+MediaWiki

Yes, I know, it isn't possible to judge a software from a list of features but at least it helps.

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#4 2006-11-08 17:15:18

Romashka
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Registered: 2005-12-07
Posts: 1,054

Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

PJ wrote:

In case someone don't know about this site which compares features between diffrent wiki engines.
http://www.wikimatrix.org/compare/DokuWiki+MediaWiki

BTW, some small features of DukuWiki are not listed there.


to live is to die

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#5 2006-11-08 17:22:17

PJ
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2005-10-11
Posts: 602

Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

Romashka wrote:
PJ wrote:

In case someone don't know about this site which compares features between diffrent wiki engines.
http://www.wikimatrix.org/compare/DokuWiki+MediaWiki

BTW, some small features of DukuWiki are not listed there.

Which are? Could you please tell me since I am not an expert on DokuWiki.

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#6 2006-11-08 17:24:59

Romashka
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Registered: 2005-12-07
Posts: 1,054

Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

PJ wrote:
Romashka wrote:

BTW, some small features of DukuWiki are not listed there.

Which are? Could you please tell me since I am not an expert on DokuWiki.

"Revision Diffs: Between all" is valid for DokuWiki too. There is small mod for current stable version and IIRC it is included in current dev version.

Also tables support in DokuWiki is not worse than in MediaWiki, IMHO.

I also not quite understand what they mean by "Custom Styles" feature.  :?

Also, there are few different Definition List plugins with more or less features in each, depending on installation needs.


MediaWiki was made for Wikipedia's purposes (that's why there are multiple categories, redirects, statistics etc.).
DokuWiki was made for consolidated and consistent documenting.


to live is to die

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#7 2006-11-08 18:35:16

Pierre
Developer
From: Bonn
Registered: 2004-07-05
Posts: 1,964
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Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

From a technical view mediawiki is superior over dokuwiki. Its also easier to administrate and scales a lot better. (remeber: dokuwiki is not able to use a databse as backend. This will slow down your wiki when it`s growing in size.)

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#8 2006-11-08 19:11:31

dtw
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From: UK
Registered: 2004-08-03
Posts: 4,439
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Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

.:edit:.

This isn't supposed to be flammage - it's just the passion coming through!

.:end edit:.

I think most of the people who voted for dokuwiki aren't adquetely knowledgable about this and have been "lobbied" by previous comments.  I've used dokuwiki and I don't think it is anywhere near as scalable as mediawiki, as Pierre says.  I think people's main issue with the wiki is that it looks crappy at the moment.  I've almost never seen anyone complain vociferously that our wiki is technically inappropriate - just poorly managed and laid out.  Are there really any wiki experts here with an informed opinion on this?

I don't think people give a crap what the backend is as long as the interface is nice and the information is there.

I think you guys just need to get on and make these things good.  Community involvement is very important but not when technical decisions are involved.  This isn't a geeky "let's try this and see how it goes" type thing - this is a serious investment of time and effort for everyone that uses that wiki, which is a lot of people.  Where such a big decision is involved I think you need to be a bit more business minded about it.

"But Arch isn't a business," they bleat in unison!  Well, yeah, it is.  It may be not for profit but it still has many of the infrastructural components of a business and business practice isn't just something that people go through for fun - methods are there for a reason.  Take the previous, utterly fantastic and virtually hitchless migration.

Aside from that switch the software isn't going to circumvent the main issues: categorisation and poorly made documents.  That's what you guys need to figure out, implement and test.

Looks wise the arch.de wiki already has a spanky mediawiki style sheet - let's not bother reinventing the wheel or going OTT about all this, let's just get it going again and see how it fares.

If there are still problems once you sort out the fundamental problems with the wiki then consider a MAJOR change of software but otherwise why bother?  Certainly not for shits and giggles.

.:edited again:.
Some how I missed the n't off of isn't

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#9 2006-11-08 19:22:07

gradgrind
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2005-10-06
Posts: 921

Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

I'm certainly not a wiki expert, but I think what dtw says makes a lot of sense. I'm sure mediawiki can do the job, docuwiki probably too (though I do wonder about the lack of db back-end), but it should be the maintainer who has the last word. Meanwhile, let's try to get the content and structure right.

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#10 2006-11-08 19:30:07

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

thanks for going off topic dtw, I didn't want to have to do it myself.

The issue here is that most of the people that are getting their act together enough to help out with wiki, rather than blat about it, seem to want to use docuwiki. I personally don't know much about either framework, I've searched google, but I don't have the time to really investigate it.

As for style and categorization, Foxbunny's done a wonderful job on categorization and is still working on it with help from several other community members, though the initial drive seems to have died down. Pierre's linked me to his styles and something like that will eventually be going into the wiki if we stick with media wiki. At the moment, no-one's really volunteered to maintain the wiki, though Romashka intends to work on it eventually, if no-one else gets to it first.

I've seen trainloads of advice on how to clean-up both wiki and forums. With the exception of a few choice users who know who they are, not many people have stepped up to actually lend a hand. Every person posting here could have recategorized one wiki page in the time it took them to post. Did you?

Dusty

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#11 2006-11-08 21:41:36

foxbunny
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From: Serbia
Registered: 2006-10-31
Posts: 759
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Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

First off, I'd like to note that I know nothing about the technical side of this debate. The reason I support DokuWiki migration (although not so vigorously), is becuse we need a more elegant way to handle multi-language content. I'm sure your english-speaking folk don't mind having MediaWiki, but, frakly, I find  having to append language info to a page title simply idiotic. (And having english pages as standards that don't have '(English)' at the end of the title is discrimination we don't want).

EDIT:

(DokuWiki)
en:kde -> titled KDE
sr:kde -> also titled KDE, no problem

searching for KDE gives you both pages listed as "en:kde" and "sr:kde".

So far, I wasn't able to find a way to address categories by their root category on MediaWiki, like addressing [Pacman] as "[Pacman] under [English] root".

END EDIT

Using multiple separate domains for language is NOT a good solution. Why? Because the search is impossible over multiple domains. I've tried searching for 'KDE' in the Serbian section of Wikipedia, and it turned out nothing, although the article exists in English section. That's impractical.

So, any wiki that we use, needs to support (among other features) :

1. multilanguage pages with the same title (page name, ect)
2. multilanguage search

I don't say we need DokuWiki. We just need solutions to problems. If those can be solved easily with MediaWiki, than I will vote for it. If DokuWiki offers solutions that MediaWiki won't, I'll vote for DokuWiki.

PS

Yes, I'm also skeptical about DokuWiki because I don't really know how it works. MediaWiki is good software, but it certainly lack some features. We can certainly improve the interface and other little bits, but there are limitations which are evident at this point.

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#12 2006-11-08 21:50:45

dtw
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From: UK
Registered: 2004-08-03
Posts: 4,439
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Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

Dusty wrote:

thanks for going off topic dtw, I didn't want to have to do it myself.

Sorry I thought we were discussing migrating the wiki to another software.  I also thought it was worth pointing out that the poll is unlikely to produce valuable results.

Dusty wrote:

The issue here is that most of the people that are getting their act together enough to help out with wiki, rather than blat about it, seem to want to use docuwiki.

I'm not sure what that says about their interest in the project.

Dusty wrote:

I've seen trainloads of advice on how to clean-up both wiki and forums. With the exception of a few choice users who know who they are, not many people have stepped up to actually lend a hand. Every person posting here could have recategorized one wiki page in the time it took them to post. Did you?

lol Dude, you're preaching to the choir, I had your job.  I'm pleased for you that you have managed to stir up some zeal but don't get too depressed if it falls totally flat.  Hopefully you'll hold it all together and make some real changes though.

And, no, I didn't recategorise a wiki page because you asked for opinion, not for people to categorise a wiki page.

I'd like to add that I think multi-language support is extremely important.  I also don't know if dokuwiki can fulfil those needs but I'd support a solution that does.

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#13 2006-11-08 22:03:21

foxbunny
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From: Serbia
Registered: 2006-10-31
Posts: 759
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Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

Dusty wrote:

though the initial drive seems to have died down.

Lolz. Don't be too hard on us Dusty! We are doing as much as we can with the time we have available. smile

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#14 2006-11-08 22:06:33

scrawler
Member
Registered: 2005-06-07
Posts: 318

Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

For what it's worth, you can also make dokuwiki look like mediawiki if you want to.  See here:
http://tatewake.com/wiki/projects:monobook_for_dokuwiki

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#15 2006-11-08 22:58:02

Romashka
Forum Fellow
Registered: 2005-12-07
Posts: 1,054

Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

scrawler wrote:

For what it's worth, you can also make dokuwiki look like mediawiki if you want to.  See here:
http://tatewake.com/wiki/projects:monobook_for_dokuwiki

Arbitrary revisions diff will be nice addon to this.


to live is to die

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#16 2006-11-09 02:41:41

iphitus
Forum Fellow
From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2004-10-09
Posts: 4,927

Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

Agreeing with the above comments, I dont think a lot of the people pushing dokuwiki realise the time and effort a full migration takes. It's not something you can push and say "oh yeah, lets get mediawiki, and the devs and tus can migrate it". Sorry, but you're there migrating it too, and it takes a lot of time, and effort to do *well*. Given that there's a lot more posts, and translations than there was for the phpwiki->mediawiki migration, it's goin to be a huge task

Media wiki is not broken.
It is not performing under par.
It is not out of date and *utterly* inferior to dokuwiki
Mediawiki fulfills our needs well.

And isnt that what's important? Most of the nitty little tiny features that Romashka has linked are not going to be used by most. The core function of a wiki is to put information and have it easily accessed and readable. We moved from phpwiki because it was not accomplishing that, it was unstable and not handling the growth.

People's motivations to move are not based on fault in mediawiki, it's the minor things about dokuwiki, such as look, and tiny features. These things are not sufficient reason to move. As it is, the look is going to be fixed up, and foxbunny is doing a wonderful job of tidying it all up.

On the dokuwiki front, I've seen a lot of concerns about it's quality.

Pierre wrote:

From a technical view mediawiki is superior over dokuwiki. Its also easier to administrate and scales a lot better. (remeber: dokuwiki is not able to use a databse as backend. This will slow down your wiki when it`s growing in size.)

We moved *away* from phpwiki because it couldnt scale. We don't want to migrate to a setup with those problems, even if they are potential.

foxbunny: I dont think the way translation is done now is a problem, i think it's quite a simple and effective solution to just have a page titled under the other language. The problem you mention with searching, is a fault with mediawiki's search -- quite frankly, it's pathetic. IMHO, we should look at fixing that up instead, possibly utilise google to search it.

I know i've reiterated stuff that dtw and others have said, but I agree, people dont understand the size of the move, and the technical reasons for each wiki - they just want one for aesthetics, or minor tackons and candy.

James

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#17 2006-11-09 15:13:06

foxbunny
Member
From: Serbia
Registered: 2006-10-31
Posts: 759
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Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

EDIT: Now that I've learned of some of the MediaWiki's features, I'm no longer inclined to moving to DokuWiki.

iphitus wrote:

it takes a lot of time, and effort to do *well*. Given that there's a lot more posts, and translations than there was for the phpwiki->mediawiki migration, it's goin to be a huge task

I agree. And if we ever move to DokuWiki, I'll be there to help out as much as I can. smile

iphitus wrote:

foxbunny: I dont think the way translation is done now is a problem, i think it's quite a simple and effective solution to just have a page titled under the other language. The problem you mention with searching, is a fault with mediawiki's search -- quite frankly, it's pathetic. IMHO, we should look at fixing that up instead, possibly utilise google to search it.

Apart from fixing the search function (one suggestion: please introduce a case-insensitive search, pleeez!) Byte has brought to our attention the namespaces. Can some of you more technical people look into that.

For me, namespaces would hugely improve the way translations are handled at this moment.

More specifically, we need all pages to be assigned to one of the language namespaces (not abbreviated coutry codes, but full language names, like English:, 日本語:, српски:, etc) and allow multiple pages that have the same name but fall under different namespace, like English:KDE, 日本語:KDE, српски:KDE. IMHO, That's not just cosmetic, it's elegant and intuitive. Also, I assume it would allow searching for pages easier, since one search on KDE would list all mentioned pages. (It was my ignorance that lead me to believe that was a feature present in DokuWiki and not in MediaWiki.)

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#18 2006-11-09 16:00:14

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

Another thing to bear in mind is that our version of mediawiki is quite out of date. This is double-edged; an update to mediawiki may solve some of the problems people are finding with it. On the same hand, I have no idea how much trouble an update will be; if its troublesome, it may be a good time to migrate anyway.

Dusty

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#19 2006-11-09 18:33:56

twiistedkaos
Member
Registered: 2006-05-20
Posts: 666

Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

UPdating MediaWiki would be alot easier then installing a whole no wiki in itself. Migrating to a new wiki would involve rewritting all the pages/articles within. Upgrading would involve running a php script to upgrade, walla.

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#20 2006-11-09 21:31:03

dtw
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From: UK
Registered: 2004-08-03
Posts: 4,439
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Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

twiistedkaos wrote:

UPdating MediaWiki would be alot easier then installing a whole no wiki in itself. Migrating to a new wiki would involve rewritting all the pages/articles within. Upgrading would involve running a php script to upgrade, walla.

Quite.  I'm really struggling to fathom why anyone would seriously consider migrating the wiki again.  The upgrade should be simple, the migration would be an enormous effort.  That in itself is reason not to do it.

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#21 2006-11-09 21:58:27

brazzmonkey
Member
From: between keyboard and chair
Registered: 2006-03-16
Posts: 818

Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

i don't have a clue about whether dokuwiki is better than mediawiki, but i'm pretty sure migrating all documents to dokuwiki isn't worth the hassle.
personnally i don't see anything wrong with our current wiki software.


what goes up must come down

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#22 2006-11-09 22:40:05

foxbunny
Member
From: Serbia
Registered: 2006-10-31
Posts: 759
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Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

brazzmonkey wrote:

i don't have a clue about whether dokuwiki is better than mediawiki, but i'm pretty sure migrating all documents to dokuwiki isn't worth the hassle.
personnally i don't see anything wrong with our current wiki software.

Maybe the question should not be whether MediaWiki is good or bad, but whther we are juicing all the capabilities it has to offer. In ther words, is our setup good.

The way I see it, after a couple of days of intensive work on ArchWiki, it all boils down to this:

1. my fingers hurt (MediaWiki is making me type a lot)
2. I'm not really satisfied about how things work.

So, if we are all agreeing that, as someone has pointed out, MediaWiki is not "*utterly* inferior to dokuwiki" then we have an entirely different issue at hand.

Also, there are two groups participating in this thread.

1. technical people
2. less technical people (I believe that utterly non-technical people are not participating)

For less technical people, like me, technical reasons for complaining are not primary issues. My primary concern is to organize the wiki and do so more quickly and efficiently.

Of course, I want you people to actually put some hard work into ArchWiki, and THEN judge if MediaWiki software is good or not. Just administering things is half a story. The other half belongs to users, writers and editors.

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#23 2006-11-09 23:10:14

Dusty
Schwag Merchant
From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

I'm still of two minds on this; the last migration project was a HUGE task, and there was a reason cactus chose mediawiki. However, I'm also finding that working with mediawiki is a PITA. The primary issue is that things that should be simple are tending to be complex and requiring a lot of research.... and ironically, mediawiki isn't terribly well documented. :-D

Mediawiki is big and is designed for big projects. As a project, it seems to be rather more Ubuntu-like than Arch-like. This is to say, its kind of overengineered and gets in the way rather than aiding its maintainers.

I'd particularly like to hear the opinion of somebody who is very familiar with mediawiki and knows how to leverage its many features. Its a tough beast to tame, and I think that's why foxbunny and I are starting to get frustrated.

Dusty

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#24 2006-11-09 23:16:27

foxbunny
Member
From: Serbia
Registered: 2006-10-31
Posts: 759
Website

Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

Just for the record:

There are 2,407 total pages in the database. This includes "talk" pages, pages about ArchWiki, minimal "stub" pages, redirects, and others that probably don't qualify as content pages. Excluding those, there are 703 pages that are probably legitimate content pages.

From the ArchWiki stats page. wink

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#25 2006-11-10 00:09:54

tardo
Member
Registered: 2006-07-15
Posts: 526

Re: Docuwiki vs Mediawiki

For the record, docuwiki has a mediawiki -> docuwiki page conversion plugin. One for command-line, and there's a web converter as well

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