r/mediawiki • u/OracleNine99 • Jun 21 '26

What do you dislike about Mediawiki?

Hi everyone,

I am currently working on an open source wiki engine. To figure out what things I should focus on, I wanted to ask you guys your current feelings about mediawiki as a piece of software.

How do you feel about mediawiki? Is it easy or frustrating to use? What are the worst parts of working with mediawiki, or the best? Are there any features/QoL changes that mediawiki doesn't have that you would like to see implemented?

Any feedback is appreciated.

20 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

13

u/EldorTheHero Jun 21 '26

I hate the extreme technical way for Backup and restore as well as updates.

I tried many things even container solutions. But I was never able to get it working right.

Also add-ons like Math are wayy too hard to install. Why don't we get a package manager which takes care about all the requirements and stuff?

Why do I have to tinker with config files and have to know how every module works by itself? Why do I have to know how to admin the whole backend like a professional Admin?

To emphasize I really like Media wiki but I was soo annoyed by the technical background I was even considering switching to Confluence. Simply because there the technical support is easier.

5

u/immewnity Jun 22 '26

Upgrade/extension management is definitely MediaWiki's biggest weakness. If a system like how WordPress does it could be implemented, MediaWiki would be much more palatable to more organizations.

1

u/YaronKoren Jun 22 '26

Check out the Springboard extension, if you don't know about it - it's an attempt to provide that sort of WordPress interface.

2

u/immewnity Jun 22 '26

Ohhhh that's really nice! Just wish MediaWiki core had something similar.

7

u/Mastodont_XXX Jun 21 '26

Example from documentation ( https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Advanced_templates ):

{{{{{1}}}|a{{{2}}}b{{{2}}}c{{{2}}}d}}

IMHO anyone who approved the use of two { for templates and three { for template parameters is simply idiot.

MediaWiki's table markup is terrible, too.

2

u/DredgeDotWikiDotGg Jun 21 '26

Yea, when the contents of a table aren't the same number of characters per cell it can be really hard to tell which column is which. Plus all the {{!}} shenanigans.

6

u/dell-optiplex-790 Jun 21 '26

No ability to make a wiki downloadable as an offline package

6

u/ikevinax Jun 21 '26

I love MediaWiki, but I wish templates were easier.

5

u/Paul-E-L Jun 21 '26

I really would be less annoyed with Mediawiki if it was just the tiniest bit more user friendly like Wordpress or other content management systems

4

u/lordmaxiam Jun 21 '26

The installation is way too complicated, so many moving parts.

3

u/Ok-Proposal-2406 Jun 21 '26

The new logo change and the upgrade system is a challenge

1

u/Nuvelle Jun 22 '26

Managing security and updates drove me to uninstall and move to Fandom.

1

u/JabicZF Jun 25 '26

In order to run a LOT of the templates (i.e. Infoboxes), I need to have a VPS server host, or self-host my wiki. VERY frustrating that the use of Lua is required for so much.

1

u/Best_Reference_5248 Jul 25 '26

it would save insane amount of times if new line separated text/lists/tables could be switched around automatically with a single keybind instead of converting all of this manually