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Date:      Sat, 5 May 2018 15:01:05 -0500 (CDT)
From:      "Valeri Galtsev" <galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu>
To:        "Paul Schmehl" <pschmehl_lists@tx.rr.com>
Cc:        "Chris Hill" <chris@monochrome.org>, "FreeBSD Questions List" <questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Looking for wiki software
Message-ID:  <56589.177.237.78.100.1525550465.squirrel@cosmo.uchicago.edu>
In-Reply-To: <576B9BAE27C0E4EC5E3A1309@Pauls-MacBook-Pro.local>
References:  <alpine.BSF.2.20.1805050648110.41515@tripel.monochrome.org> <576B9BAE27C0E4EC5E3A1309@Pauls-MacBook-Pro.local>

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On Sat, May 5, 2018 2:30 pm, Paul Schmehl wrote:
> --On May 5, 2018 at 6:53:00 AM -0400 Chris Hill <chris@monochrome.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Hello list,
>>
>> I'm looking for advice and opinions on wiki software. This would be for
>> use by a small business group, probably not more than 25 or so users in
>> total. The idea is that each user would contribute material on subjects
>> in which he is "expert." Eventually we end up with solid documentation
>> of
>> our processes and our homegrown software, and then things don't go to
>> hell as much the next time someone is nearly killed in an accident.
>>
>> I have a reasonably decent machine on which to run this, but still it
>> would be nice if the solution were, for example, not too heavy on the
>> build- and run-dependencies.
>>
>> Other nice-to-haves:
>>
>>   . Easy user management, ideally with self-signup
>>   . Use with http server of my choice, i.e. server-agnostic
>>   . TLS supported
>>
>> I'd be grateful for any suggestions, or for stories of good or bad
>> experiences.
>
> Unless you have someone to manage it who is very technically astute, I
> would NOT recommend mediawiki. It is written by programmers for
> programmers, and requires a great deal of commandline work to get it
> working right. If your admin can't read code, stay away from mediawiki.
>

I strongly disagree. Mediawiki is quite simple to set up, web based script
does all for you. Also, it is decently secure architectured. And there is
absolutely no need to look into the code. I have more than a dozen of
mediawiki instances on the servers I maintain.

> I haven't used it, but looked at it in some detail, and I would recommend
> docuwiki. For the size project you're considering, it's probably ideal.

And I disageree again. I do not run docuwiki, but I looked in detail into
a couple of docuwiki intallations when I inherited support of couple of
servers. I quite disliked what I saw, it looked like a mess to me even
though its base is quite trivial, and all your data are in plain files.
All in all, security wise to maintain docuwiki is sysadmin's nightmare
IMHO. As you can guess, I migrated docuwikis I inherited to mediawikis,
even though it required some effort to convince wiki owners.

My advise would be: take few minutes more, set up mariadb, mysql or
postgresql (the last is what I usually use), install mediawiki, subscribe
to mediawiki mail list so you know when there is critical update, which
are released occasionally.

Valeri

>
> Paul Schmehl, Retired
> As if it wasn't already obvious, my opinions
> are my own and not those of my employer.
> *******************************************
> "It is as useless to argue with those who have
> renounced the use of reason as to administer
> medication to the dead." Thomas Jefferson
> "There are some ideas so wrong that only a very
> intelligent person could believe in them." George Orwell
>
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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++



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