1 Mediawiki vs SharePoint
2 =======================
3 :author: Aaron Ball
4 :email: nullspoon@iohq.net
5
6 A ways back I began toying with MediaWiki as a proof of concept/research
7 mission. As I slowly learned its capabilities, I started to realize that it had
8 really great potential as a replacement for Microsoft Office SharePoint. I'm
9 not saying that for religious reasons either. A few reasons I think it
10 supercedes SharePoint are...
11
12
13 [[mediawiki-pros]]
14 == MediaWiki Pros
15
16 * Its markup makes writing documentation fast and easy (wow that felt
17 like an infomercial)
18
19 * It doesn't require any particular browser to be fully functional (or
20 even partially functional)
21
22 * Document editing is done in browser without the need of external
23 software
24
25 * Check-out and check-in/save are done in two steps unlike with
26 SharePoint where you must download a document, check it out so no one can
27 make changes while you are working on it, make your changes in MS Word, save
28 changes in MS Word, upload new version to SharePoint, fill out changelog
29 information, and delete the local copy on your computer to avoid clutter and
30 having multiple copies of one document. That might have been a bit over
31 exaggerated but certainly not by much.
32
33 * MediaWiki tracks content. SharePoint tracks documents. They both
34 provide versioning but because of MediaWiki's content tracking, it can
35 perform letter-by-letter comparisons on different article versions easily
36 in-browser and without extra plugins (ActiveX, I'm looking at you!)
37
38 * It has user pages which notify users if a change was made, making them
39 ideal for assigning tasks to members of a team.
40
41 * Permissions are rarely a concern (when should you be putting super
42 sensitive information in unencrypted docs on a document repository anyway) as
43 where in most SharePoint setups, permissions are often fought with. However,
44 Mediawiki's permissions structure is simpler and less robust so this isn't
45 necessarily a pro or a con.
46
47 * MediaWiki is cheaper and uses fewer resources as a LAMP or WAMP stack
48 requires a far less powerful machine and far less money in licensing fees
49 than an IIS server.
50
51 * Mediawiki is very fluid with its templating system and various popular
52 extensions (one of my favorites is
53 http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ParserFunctions[ParserFunctions])
54 which allow it to be tailored to almost any project need without the
55 need of an expensive developement team
56
57 * MediaWiki is the software used by
58 http://www.wikipedia.org/[Wikipedia], so support and development for it won't
59 be going away any time soon and backwards compatibility will be a must for a
60 very long time because one of the biggest and most popular sites on the
61 internet has a vested interest in it working well with their current setup
62
63 * MediaWiki is secure, again because it is used by
64 http://www.wikipedia.org/[Wikipedia]. It can be assumed that such a high
65 profile site is under constant attack and investigation. How many times
66 have you seen Wikipedia go down because of a hack? How many times have
67 you seen a SharePoint site go down just because of daily use?
68
69 * It also supports a standardized wiki markup language so it can be
70 ported to other products much easier than a SharePoint shared docs site can
71
72
73 [[sharepoint-pros]]
74 == SharePoint Pros
75
76 * As mentioned, SharePoint's permissions structure is more robust than
77 MediaWiki's but again, this isn't really a pro or a con, just a difference.
78
79 * A SharePoint Shared Docs library can be mounted as a Windows share
80 allowing _seemingly_ local editing of documents.
81
82 * SharePoint integrates into Active Directory. MediaWiki does too, but
83 not by default.
84
85 * Windows admins should feel more comfortable administering SharePoint
86 (not using, administering, MediaWiki is still unquestionably easier to use)
87
88 * SharePoint supports browser-based calendars with a backend in Exchange
89 offering mostly seamless integration of team calendars between Outlook and
90 the team site
91
92 That's all for now. If I think up more pros for either, I'll update the
93 list here.
94
95
96 Category:Open_Source
97 Category:MediaWiki
98
99
100 // vim: set syntax=asciidoc:
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