New Wiki System: Deki Wiki

[Christopher Rawlings]

On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 5:16 AM, Joachim Steiger <roh at openmoko.org> wrote:
> sorry to answer that question so briefly only.
>
> we admins are in enough pain with mediawiki and its dependency for php
> as it is.
>
> but any software needing mono or java, and still using php is totally
> out of the question, especially if it would not get us much gain
> compared to the mediawiki.
>
> sure. mediawiki sucks sometimes. but replacing one big green, slimly,
> ugly monster with another one is and will never be my goal.
> to be fair, when there would have been a sane way to migrate mediawiki
> to something better, we would have probably done it already.
>
> to make it even more clear: every php install i can kill, i do.

The mono backend completely houses the business logic and API for the
wiki, whereas PHP is used for the presentation layer (hint: design
patterns).  The product is very well architected and hasn't been coded
by your standard PHP coding wannabe.  The product has been written by
extremely talented (and payed) software engineers.  I'm glad that you
believe mediawiki sucks and is a big green, slimy, ugly monster which
was the exact reason I was trying to suggest a better solution.  If
your preconceived notions of mono are hindering your decision process,
I guess I can't do anything about that.  It is a very fast and
efficient product.

> for a little story:
> when we were searching for a new webshop for openmoko, we also have seen
> hordes of php wannabe-shops and os-commerce and its forks. not only that
> this software often seems to be written with exploitability in mind,
> (sorry, who can be so stupid to put credit card data of customers in the
> same db as php templated and 'plugins' (executable code)), often they
> even require stupid settings like register globals and so on...
>
> so 'no harm intended', but using any more php webapps is definitively
> what i try to avert.
>

I also agree that there are _very_ many poorly written and insecure
PHP applications...which is another reason that I didn't hesitate to
recommend the wiki.  It was built to be secure (again, very well
architected and the use of API keys for gaining access to backend
business logic).  Deki Wiki has become one of the most popular wiki's
in a relatively short amount of time for good reason.  I'm sorry that
you are so jaded by other products but you have obviously judged one
application based on others you have had experience with.  'no harm
intended' from this end either...if a switch to another wiki was
totally out of the question then a simple answer would have sufficed.
Instead a long post reveals a lack of understanding of the product in
question and a general close mindedness for new ideas.

-Chris