Thoughts on DokuWiki (Which is what the Melonland wiki is using)

[GlitchyZorua]

I don't mean to be a bother, but I'm not a fan of how the DokuWiki handles the Melonland Wiki  , It's a little too janky, it's pretty barebones from what i'm used to, and its missing core parts of what a wiki needs!!     


Why would I want a wiki that is super simplistic? It's missing alot of core features that an average wiki would need! I hate to say it, and i feel very terrible for saying this, but even the fandom wiki has all the tools you need to start a wiki! Where is the citations? Where is banners? Where is the Templates?  Where is the Talk Pages? Yes, half of these can be installed with a simple plugin, but most of the plugins in the repository are either abandoned, or barebones! Like the citations. They do allow you to use citations, a thing almost every single average wiki uses, but its missing one thing. Citation Needed. Which is a important part of a wiki. How else am I suppose to mark a part that says "hey uh, we need evidence for this part". What makes me dumbfounded is that the creator who made this citation needed never implemented this feature, which it should! I even tried to email them about it, and got no response.

I looked at the refnotes plugin documentation and saw- oh hey look, Citation Needed!



Perhaps it's an undocumented feature that the refnote plugin has?

I looked inside the code just to see if it was supported by the refnote plugin itself and...

...

Not by the refnotes plugin itself but...

sigh

It was just manually placed in there.

Code

<sup>%%[%%//[[citation needed]]//%%]%%</sup>

So then i wonder if it was just on some sort of to-do list, a roadmap perhaps? Well, I didn't find one ANYWHERE!

Oh well, you can't say I didn't try, right?

The DokuWiki tomfoolery doesn't stop there. because before the melonland wiki had its talk page added (after adding a new plugin...), I noticed how there was a signature button. Now this button didn't come bundled with the talk page plugin, it didn't really, it came out of the box with DokuWiki. and this is where things get really, really weird. Melon was apparently not aware of this button, ever. Which gets me very confused. Why would you have a signature feature, but not have a talk page?



I also noticed how this little button (when clicked), pastes a link, which clicked, it... instead of going to your forum profile, it links to your email address. What is problematic about it? Well. Even if you had your email address set to hidden on the forum, this signature button does not abide by the settings, and displays your email address regardless if you have your email address hidden from the public.

I can understand why it does this, some parts of the wiki isn't connected to the forum, dokuwiki and SMF. they are separate projects, but... i don't know how it grabbed my email, password, and username from the forum? What type of witch craft is this? :O

Either way, it baffling. the way that dokuwiki is set up, it messes with my head! 

Let's point out the fact that there is no Templates, which would make editing so much easier.

For example. What if i want to mark the article as a stub? I would insert the {{stub}} template. However, DokuWiki doesn't allow that. You can't even create your own template, you have to install plugins in order to make it work. Which is pretty... sad.

If i wanted to mark a wiki article as a stub, i would have to manually create a banner on the of the page, like this:

Code

<note important>Stub This page is a stub! Please improve the Melonland Wiki.</note>

Instead of this:

Code

{{stub}}

Which makes things kind of hard to manage. I even heard that MediaWiki keeps track of a list of articles that are a stub, keeps tracks of articles has links that lead to a non-existent article, etc. Which is a thing that DokuWiki doesn't have.

As the wiki grows, its going to become harder and harder to manage, and clean up without these features.

I fear that the more we have to manually add these ""templates"", the more messy the wiki would get.



So with all that being said and done, what alternatives are out there?


I'm not going to list all of them here, If you want a good list of alternatives, you can skip to this timestamp in this video to see a good list of them. (13:56)

However I will share one good wiki farm, that you can self-host.

Miraheze
Miraheze is a free and open-source wiki that uses MediaWiki instead of DokuWiki, it's very customizable, it's basically everything you need to start a wiki! :O

You probably know a few Wikis that uses Miraheze, like the Minecraft Wiki!

You can learn more on how to migrate from DokuWiki to MediaWiki here:  https://www.linuxintro.org/wiki/Convert_a_dokuwiki_to_mediawiki

Conclusion.

DokuWiki is all about simplicity. Without these core features, it makes me think. What does DokuWiki want to be? Why does it exist? Why would I have to install plugins for the simplest features? It doesn't make any sense because the forum is full of useless features, which is the charm of the melonland forum! Am I wrong on some points? Maybe.

And no. I don't recommend using that one ad-infested wiki-farm site known as fandom.

[Absentmind]

Idk, I mean how much content actually goes on the Melonland wiki? if I'm being totally real, I've only ever used it to figure out how to edit my forum profile. If you're worried about scalability then I guess it's something to worry about in the long term. But if its working, why change it?

[GlitchyZorua]

@Absentmind I've been doing my contribution on the Wiki, alot. For example, this https://wiki.melonland.net/monster_interview

...and I've been struggling with the lack of features, that an average wiki would need, if you are writing some lore, you are going to need citation, but you would also need the "citation needed" thing, which is one of the many things that DokuWiki fails to do.

Sometimes it isn't better when it's simple. Especially for the sake of it being a wiki.

[DeltaFrost]

I disagree. I think this is based on personal user preference. I understand your point of view as an experienced wiki user, but I actually really like how simplistic DokuWiki is. And that is what it is made for - people who, for whatever reason (even if it seems weird), DO want a more simplistic wiki software. I personally would much prefer to start off simple and barebones, and then add plugins if I need to. I haven't run into any problems with installing plugins to suit my needs on my own private DokuWiki. Plugins like Wrap (which add the little alert boxes and other things) have been more than enough for me and are compatible with the latest version of DokuWiki, so I'm quite happy with it.

For something like MelonLand wiki, where new inexperienced users go to learn information about the forum and HTML, I just personally agree with the DokuWiki philosophy of 'the simpler the better'. 

[Melooon]

The thing about DokuWiki is that, while it has many limitations; it comes with the benefit of basically being a set-and-forget system. There are essentially no updates, there is no database, there are no accounts, there are very few points of failure.

As someone who is the only point of call for large number of web projects; points of failure and maintenance time are the most important things for me to avoid. If I burn out trying to maintain one project like the wiki, that costs time and energy from all the others 

Sooo my thoughts are basically, yes the wiki is far from perfect, but also it is the most appropriate in terms of what I can handle, and what (I think) the overall community needs at this point in time! You make a lot of comparisons to Fandom.com but that's a company with over 300 employees ~ they are in a very different place to what we can do.

I know its not the most exciting answer, and I also don't wanna discourage your wiki use because you've made a lot of great additions to it; but right now the wiki is serving its function well, its doing a good job and it would be better to support what it is, rather than wishing it were more perfect than it can be 

(in short: We can totally continue to improve its plugin load out etc, but I feel a switch to MediaWiki is a poor move right now)

[GlitchyZorua]

The thing about DokuWiki is that, while it has many limitations; it comes with the benefit of basically being a set-and-forget system. There are essentially no updates, there is no database, there are no accounts, there are very few points of failure.

As someone who is the only point of call for large number of web projects; points of failure and maintenance time are the most important things for me to avoid. If I burn out trying to maintain one project like the wiki, that costs time and energy from all the others 

Sooo my thoughts are basically, yes the wiki is far from perfect, but also it is the most appropriate in terms of what I can handle, and what (I think) the overall community needs at this point in time! You make a lot of comparisons to Fandom.com but that's a company with over 300 employees ~ they are in a very different place to what we can do.

I know its not the most exciting answer, and I also don't wanna discourage your wiki use because you've made a lot of great additions to it; but right now the wiki is serving its function well, its doing a good job and it would be better to support what it is, rather than wishing it were more perfect than it can be 

(in short: We can totally continue to improve its plugin load out etc, but I feel a switch to MediaWiki is a poor move right now)

Hmmm, I see.

Well fair enough. I was getting tired of manually creating "templates", like the citation needed thingy.

That being SAID, @DeltaFrost has shown us a really good plugin, which is... Wrap?

This looks like a solid plugin, one that could replace almost some of the plugins that we have.

Not trying to nag but... could you please add this so I could try it out in the playground see if it's worth a replacement?

[Melooon]

could you please add this so I could try it out in the playground see if it's worth a replacement?

Done; lemmy know what plugins should be removed if it suits ur needs!

[GlitchyZorua]

@Melooon Okay but first, what plugins do you have installed in the Melonland wiki? It doesn't really show a list... 

[DeltaFrost]

Here are the other plugins I use on my private wiki, in case they can be of use on MelonLand Wiki, if they're not already installed. (Well, I also use htmlok which I guess sort of replaces the need for Wrap, but that's not suitable for public wikis due to security issue):

• PageTitle
• PageList
• Tag
• Move

Some of these are not verified as compatible, but they've worked fine on my Kaos version install. I hope that you can find the right set of plugins for what you're looking for. 

[GlitchyZorua]

These aren't what im looking for, but very useful! 

Might have to pesture meloon to add them 

[Melooon]

We have....

SMF 2.0 Authentication Plugin by digger
Citations for DokuWiki by Terence J. Grant
Note Plugin by Anael Mobilia
prosemirror plugin by Andreas Gohr
Redirect Plugin by Andreas Gohr
RefNotes Plugin by Mykola Ostrovskyy
Revert Manager by Andreas Gohr
safefnrecode plugin by Andreas Gohr
Spoiler2 Plugin by halbbit
styling plugin by Andreas Gohr
talkpage plugin by Andreas Gohr
Typography plugin by Satoshi Sahara
User Manager by Chris Smith
Video Sharing Site Plugin by Andreas Gohr
Wrap Plugin by Anika Henke

[GlitchyZorua]

We have....

SMF 2.0 Authentication Plugin by digger
Citations for DokuWiki by Terence J. Grant
prosemirror plugin by Andreas Gohr
Redirect Plugin by Andreas Gohr
RefNotes Plugin by Mykola Ostrovskyy
Revert Manager by Andreas Gohr
safefnrecode plugin by Andreas Gohr
Spoiler2 Plugin by halbbit
styling plugin by Andreas Gohr
talkpage plugin by Andreas Gohr
Typography plugin by Satoshi Sahara
User Manager by Chris Smith
Video Sharing Site Plugin by Andreas Gohr
Wrap Plugin by Anika Henke

Ok, so i think we remove the plugin called "Note Plugin by Anael Mobilia" (Not refnotes), because Wraps replaces it. (Might have to convert Notes -> Wraps)

And uh, add LaTeX plugin, perhaps this could become useful one day?

https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:latexwas

[GlitchyZorua]

A few more interesting plugins.

No need to add all of these.

https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:random_page - Random page, adds a link on the top that (when clicked) takes you to a random page

https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:xkcd - displays the latest Xkcd comic

https://www.dokuwiki.org/it:devel:plugin_survey:developers - this page is Italian, lots of interesting plugins linked here..

https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:noticeboard - Notice board, this can be handy.

https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:clock - Clock plugin

[lime360]

tbh i don't see any problem with dokuwiki, but i think it would be better by just self-hosting a mediawiki instance becuase it would be much better by owning your own wiki articles instead of hosting them on a silo

don't get me wrong, i like miraheze, but i'm worried that it might permanently shut down in any time

i also don't like how half of miraheze wikis are basically just crappy wikis describing what's good, what's bad any why is that thing good or bad

do you have opinions on other wiki engines like wiki.js or tiddlywiki?