ComparingXWikiAndMediaWiki

From Shrubbery

I've been using XWiki [1] for some time now. I even installed at work. I did this because XWiki uses Hibernate [2], and I wanted to show everyone that Hibernate is "real". XWiki also has a lot of nice features, and is a bit easier to work with in some ways.

MediaWiki doesn't use Java or Hibernate of course, but it does come with some really nice features that XWiki doesn't have.

1 Where XWiki wins:
2 Where MediaWiki wins:
3 My Opinion
4 Update on XWiki

[edit] Where XWiki wins:

Slightly simpler wiki syntax.
Reasonably simple installation.
Put code in pages with Velocity and Groovy.
Nicer printable output, PDF.
It's a Java Web continainer application, so if you have Tomcat running already it's pretty easy to set up.

[edit] Where MediaWiki wins:

Renaming and deleting pages is supported.
The built-in search is useable.
Math notation using LaTeX
Page section editing.
Lots of people know MediaWiki wiki syntax.
Email seems to work (I never got XWiki e-mail notification to work).
Page hit counts and all that work (I never got Xwiki stats to work properly).
'minor edits' feature.

[edit] My Opinion

Well... I've only used MediaWiki for a little while, and it does seem to be better in day to day use. I really do miss the PDF functionality of XWiki, but it seems like most folks don't use that too much (it's as if they don't even see the little PDF icon! I don't understand people sometimes). As of this writing I'd say that MediaWiki is probably a better choice.