I chose MW as I knew it existed, I had the most familiarity with it, and I wanted to err towards a more featureful bit of wiki software in case I wanted features later. (Inline graphics & mathematics turned out to be useful, though I presume there are other wikis that handle those too.) I didn’t do much research to see whether other wiki software could satisfy those constraints, though.
I just want to clarify here—are you aware that personal wikis and server software such as MediaWiki are different classes of software? The most relevant reason to use personal wiki software rather than wiki serving software is, no server == no consequent security holes and system load, no need to do sysadmin type stuff to get it going. Personal wiki software is generally just an ordinary program, meaning it has it’s own GUI and can have features that it would be insecure to expose over the internet.
Personally I have found Zim a little lacking when I wanted tables (it doesn’t currently support them, except through diagrams), but it supports most other things I’ve wanted, including some rather exotic stuff
Anyway I mainly commented because using MediaWiki only for your own personal notes seems rather like cracking a walnut with a sledgehammer.
I just want to clarify here—are you aware that personal wikis and server software such as MediaWiki are different classes of software? [...] Personal wiki software is generally just an ordinary program, meaning it has it’s own GUI and can have features that it would be insecure to expose over the internet.
Apparently not! I didn’t realize “personal wikis” referred to wikis implemented as separate, ordinary programs; I’d thought they ran on web-server-plus-scripting-language stacks as MediaWiki does, just with smaller, simpler codebases and far simpler database schemas (or indeed a bunch of flat files instead of a full-blown database).
Anyway I mainly commented because using MediaWiki only for your own personal notes seems rather like cracking a walnut with a sledgehammer.
Yeah. Were I to do this again I’d look more deeply at the simpler personal wiki programs out there rather than just shrugging and going with the more familiar choice.
Is there some reason you use MediaWiki rather than a personal wiki software (for example Zim)?
I chose MW as I knew it existed, I had the most familiarity with it, and I wanted to err towards a more featureful bit of wiki software in case I wanted features later. (Inline graphics & mathematics turned out to be useful, though I presume there are other wikis that handle those too.) I didn’t do much research to see whether other wiki software could satisfy those constraints, though.
I just want to clarify here—are you aware that personal wikis and server software such as MediaWiki are different classes of software? The most relevant reason to use personal wiki software rather than wiki serving software is, no server == no consequent security holes and system load, no need to do sysadmin type stuff to get it going. Personal wiki software is generally just an ordinary program, meaning it has it’s own GUI and can have features that it would be insecure to expose over the internet.
Personally I have found Zim a little lacking when I wanted tables (it doesn’t currently support them, except through diagrams), but it supports most other things I’ve wanted, including some rather exotic stuff
Anyway I mainly commented because using MediaWiki only for your own personal notes seems rather like cracking a walnut with a sledgehammer.
Apparently not! I didn’t realize “personal wikis” referred to wikis implemented as separate, ordinary programs; I’d thought they ran on web-server-plus-scripting-language stacks as MediaWiki does, just with smaller, simpler codebases and far simpler database schemas (or indeed a bunch of flat files instead of a full-blown database).
Yeah. Were I to do this again I’d look more deeply at the simpler personal wiki programs out there rather than just shrugging and going with the more familiar choice.