I have been working with MediaWiki for a couple of years. I even have my own best practices Wiki running on MediaWiki. This experience matched with reviewing most client capabilities has led me to the belief that MediaWiki requires far too much technical awareness to recommend as a platform for clients. I have found applications such as SocialText to be a far more attractive package.
Why not MediaWiki for my clients?
- While a fabulous Open Source package, the benefits of commercial package with its support, product roadmap and dedicated team to fix issues is probably the most important reason to go with an alternate solution.
- My clients are all non-technical and have little if any knowledge of any markup language. Even with the best WYSIWYG and other helpful extensions I have found that the users need to know Wikitext. This really kills the popularity of the Wiki. For example, creating and managing categories is a dog in MediaWiki. My clients expect a far more sophisticated taxonomy solution that is simple for a non-technical user.
- MediaWiki out-of-the-box does not offer features that most clients desire. We then need to install numerous extensions. This is fine. However, we then get into a maintenance cycle that requires upkeep of these extensions. Going with a commercial (or open source alternative) package that has integrated items for this functionality removes this overhead. For example, one of the constants in my clients’ needs is to upload files to articles. MediaWiki without extensions expects you to host files someplace else and to link to them. The preferred method is one where you can browse and upload files easily right when you work on the page.
- MediaWiki templates are a bear. Compared to SocialText or other Wiki products MediaWiki requires a higher level of skills. Others that are available build more off of the more common HTML and CSS skill sets.
So, think I am off base. Please let me know and comment away.
#1 by Ed at July 22nd, 2008
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I agree with you that Mediaiwki is not the wiki for most office staff personnel. Wiki syntax is a foriegn language to them that they do not want to learn and maintaining the numerous extensions you need to make attractive is a bear. However, I would challenge you on SocialText. It has it’s good points, but after evaluating it along with Mediawiki I turned to Mindtouch Deki. It has an awesome interface, great editor and a very active development community. Check it out at http://wiki.mindtouch.com/. Plus, it is much easier to install and tweak than SocialText.
#2 by Dan Katz at July 22nd, 2008
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Thanks ED. Checking this out now and will supplement the post with an update soon.
Please everyone out there – recommend more options. I have received a few emails as well. It is clear that a lot of people find MediaWiki inadequate.
#3 by Jan Mazereeuw at July 31st, 2008
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Although I am not as conversant in the different wiki markup languages, options, packages that are out there, I would have to agree that in order to assure whatever’wiki’ tool is adopted by the user base, it MUST be easy to use.
We’re just ramping up on the requirements definition and tool selection for our first Intranet and want to ensure we get as much participation on the create and contribute front. With this goal in mind, an easy to use text editor is on the top of my list. Users are used to the ease of formatting in Word and should not be forced to learn a language or any syntax in order to publish.
Keep It Simple!
#4 by Chris Yeh at August 4th, 2008
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If you’re really focused on providing an easy to use solution for your clients, PBwiki is generally considered the easiest-to-use.
It’s hosted, so you don’t have to worry about hosting, and it’s been repeatedly picked as the best or easiest wiki to use:
http://pbwiki.com/content/Press
And we have a ton of consultants and professional services folks using our product.
#5 by Alan Lepofskt at August 5th, 2008
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Dan, thanks for the nice comments about Socialtext. In your follow up post on this topic, I added some more details about some of the new things at Socialtext. I hope you find them interesting, and see how we differ from the competition.
#6 by Peter at August 6th, 2008
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I used Atlassian’s Confluence before, and now I work for Atlassian, so, needless to say, I think it’s good stuff.
http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/
#7 by Danny Oldman at November 25th, 2008
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Dan, I completely agree with you. I manage IT for a 450 man advertising agency. Since the majority of our staff is young, we thought a Wiki would be adopted fairly quickly. But most people hated the whole wiki syntax. It made them feel like programmers. Its been 8 months since then, we have been evaluating various collaboration software, including Sharepoint and Lotus connections, along with Social text, Confluence and Cyn.in. We finally decided to go with cyn.in because of their neat user interface, fast search and the fact that is open source too.