Features I Want in a Wiki
This is a bulleted list of the features I'm looking for in a wiki.
To understand more about why or what I expect to accomplish with a wiki, see:
To see some suggestions for extensions to
WikiEngines, see:
(That page expands on some of the features listed here -- I think you need to read it to get the full flavor of what I'm looking for.)
I recognize that it is very likely I won't find a WikiEngine that meets all of these requirements. That's OK -- then I'll try to pick the one that fits the set of needs that I consider most important.
Requirements List
- Easy for a newbie to install in Linux (or Windows)
- Good performance with 100,000 pages (may require a database)
- No proprietary software required (low cost)
- Open source or freeware (so I can consider modifications)
- Excellent means of finding information:
- Page lists and indexes
- Possible hierarchical organization
- Ability to be indexed by Web search engines (perhaps selectable)
- Full text search including words, wild cards, phrases, boolean, within x
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- Alternates to finding a WikiEngine with the search capabilities listed above could include using a separate search engine with a wiki that stores each topic in a separate file or finding a wiki that uses a database with those search capabilities. See WikiEngineReviewAlternateSearchDiscussion?(?).
- The ability to group pages for operations like application of password protection, email notification, import, export, translation
- Subpages or other means of organizing pages in a hierarchy
- Email notification of changes on selected pages (or groups)
- Security.
- Snapshots of most revisions, and associated rollback and diff capability, but provide a secure means of deleting snapshots to preserve the WikiNature of forgetting mistakes
- No embedded HTML
- Password protection on editing of selected pages (or groups)
- Easy to read diff format
- Re Diffs: If a system is accepted that stores snapshots of only the last revision by each author, a means must exist to declare a new baseline for the diff. (The problem I'm trying to address is the one, for example, where only one person modifies a particular page (or a private wiki). In that case, the diff just keeps growing and growing (like the Energizer Rabbit?) and becomes useless to highlight the most recent change.)
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- Maybe there is a workaround to the above if I create two separate identities for myself, and then edit pages alternately. (Maybe RandyKramerA and RandyKramerB.) I'm not sure what would be required -- am I identified on this wiki by a cookie? Would I need to edit from two different machines with different cookies? (A little cumbersome, at least. I'm more curious than serious.)
- Images
- Tables
- Enhanced WikiNames including numbers and adjacent capital letters (even all caps for acronyms)
- Headings
- InterWiki links
- Import / export capabilities (for private backup, offline editing, and to support mirroring)
- Display original Wiki text formatting rules
- Translators available (for translation between wiki formatting markups)
- Editing support for mirroring
- Editing contention resolution
- A clean display to help readers and editors
- Improvements to navigation
- Ability to bookmark one or more pages to easily move between them (especially for editing)
- ??
- Hidden text
- Global search and replace (or similar tools) to support things like renaming of pages. Possible alternatives:
- Each page in a separate text file -- tools like SED, Awk
- Pages stored in a common text file, possibly indexed -- editors with search and replace capability that can handle large files
- Pages stored in a relational data base (MySQL, msql, etc.) -- ??
--
RandyKramer
Notes I put on another wiki, may reflect the beginning of a prioritization:
New Comments: What I want in a wiki: (See my WikiEngineReview at http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiEngineReview, which is rough and unfinished)
Here I try to list the things I most want (essentials):
- Easy to install (on SourceForge)
- History (more than last edit by previous author)
- Diffs (MSWord style would be nicest)
- Easy import / export
- Easy backup / restore
- Pages and history deletable
- Change notification by Email, per page (or group of pages) (pages might be grouped by Topic, Category, or "EmailGroup?")
- At least three levels of headings (beyond emphasis)
- Customizable templates (by administrator -- I guess they all are)
- Lists (bulleted and numbered, nested)
Nice to have:
- Global editing (to facilitate, for example, page name changes)
- Page locking or password protection
- Vastly improved search capability, including phrase, boolean, proximity (within x) -- might be achieved by an external search engine like htDig, with robots.txt limits on which engines can index.
- WikiNames with numbers, all caps
This is in addition to what I consider the standard features of a wiki, not listed here.
CategoryWikiEngineReview