Bug#501954: use MediaWiki instead of MoinMoin
On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 05:05:57PM +0200, Josip Rodin wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 05:50:29AM +0800, jidanni@jidanni.org wrote:
> > Package: wiki.debian.org
> > Severity: wishlist
> >
> > I hereby propose wiki.debian.org be moved from MoinMoin to the popular
> > MediaWiki software.
> >
> > I expect this proposal to sit here for several years slowly gaining
> > supporters (so please don't just stamp it wontfix, etc.) By that time
> > there will be even more programs available to do the conversion than now.
>
> There is a page on the Wiki where others (including me) already brought
> this up, please find it and link it (or maybe better to paste it).
>
> Mentioning only "popular" as the argument for MediaWiki does not do it
> justice, in fact maybe even the opposite...
In the interest of fairness, I looked it up myself, and found it pretty
quickly at http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWebsiteDiscussion
Mediawiki?
I'm really ashamed to bring this up, but maybe Debian could consider
a change to MediaWiki? I guess I'll get flamed for this, but I
actually think it's a much nicer interface (eye candy and
usage-wise).
If you compare with e.g., the Gentoo wiki, the Gentoo wiki has a
much higher activity than the Debian wiki has, and I think the
userbase does not explain this (I'd expect Debian to be just as
large).
Very sorry to bring this up, be gentle with the flaming of me now!
Answer
wiki.debian.org is a 4 months old wiki started after the DSA
volunteered to host an official Debian wiki instead of having
Michael Ivey host wiki.debian.net using Kwiki. The switch to Moin
happened at the same time. When the wiki was still run with Kwiki, I
think I was the most insistent person to request a move to
MediaWiki. Kwiki is a really poor engine, so migrating to Moin
already improved things more than they would be improved now by
switching to MediaWiki. When the migration occured, Moin was in a
little bit better position to be used by DSA than MediaWiki, Moin
was in Debian since a long time while MediaWiki was only ITP-ed.
When the migration was complete though, MediaWiki was already in
Sid, so it must not have been a big factor for the DSA. My guess is
that the DSA chose Moin since it's in Python while MediaWiki is in
PHP (I don't see anything else explaining why an engine so clearly
inferior to MediaWiki in terms of usability would have been chosen).
If you still think that moving to MediaWiki is worth it and there is
a chance that DSA agrees and implements that, there are other pages
about migrating to MediaWiki (e.g. HelpMoveDebianWikiToMediaWiki or
DebianWiki/Engine) where this discussion should be more appropriate.
This page can probably be deleted.
small note to wikis
moinmoin seems currently (2007) the most feature rich and flexible
wiki technology available, and it will stay so for some time. its
biggest advantage is the graphical editor, but also its simpler wiki
syntax and theming make it much easier to use for a beginner. from
an administration point of view it is also much simpler. just try to
get personal moin run on your pc in 5 min and synchronize with a
real moin on the web which has wiki sync enabled. -- ThurnerRupert
2007-06-13 07:35:13
software
This Wiki software that we're using right now, and/or the way it is
set up, is just horribly unfriendly compared to MediaWiki. I admit I
could be biased, having made tens of thousands of edits on Wikipedia
under MediaWiki, but other than a gazillion functional user
interfaces fixes that it could greatly benefit from, it could also
benefit from mediawiki stuff such as namespaces, slashes in URLs, no
CamelCase (ugh), categorization that is distinct from the rest of
the pages, or Special:Whatlinkshere (list of links to the page), or
edit links on sections... heck, this discussion page as such seems
strange to me, with people using subsections for responses rather
than indentation... --Joy
I should also mention - this thing doesn't allow me to remember my
login credentials in the browser. While this could be considered a
security feature, and is probably possible to work around using
greasemonkey or whatever, it's also really annoying :) --Joy
Another thing is that we don't seem to have administrator users
here. I don't know if this is the fault of our current installation
(maybe we just don't have a way of listing them? :) or a generic
problem, but MediaWiki has that, and admins are able to ban spammers
etc. --Joy
--
2. That which causes joy or happiness.
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