Mediawiki VS Synapse

Wikipedia that runs on MediaWiki which is written in PHP. source code

MediaWiki

"https://ibb.co/0F2rWbG/logo.png", 'icon' => "https://ibb.co/0F2rWbG/logo.png",];## UPO means: this is also a user preference option$wgEnableEmail = true;$wgEnableUserEmail = true; # UPO$wgEmergencyContact = "";$wgPasswordSender = "";$wgEnotifUserTalk = false; # UPO$wgEnotifWatchlist = false; # UPO$wgEmailAuthentication = true;## Database settings$wgDBtype = "mysql";$wgDBserver = "wiki";$wgDBname = "wikipapadeluxe";$wgDBuser = "root";$wgDBpassword = "";# MySQL specific settings$wgDBprefix = "";# MySQL table options to use during installation or update$wgDBTableOptions = "ENGINE=InnoDB, DEFAULT CHARSET=binary";# Shared database table# This has no effect unless $wgSharedDB is also set.$wgSharedTables[] = "actor";## Shared memory settings$wgMainCacheType = CACHE_NONE;$wgMemCachedServers = [];## To enable image uploads, make sure the 'images' directory## is writable, then set this to true:$wgEnableUploads = false;#$wgUseImageMagick = true;#$wgImageMagickConvertCommand = "/usr/bin/convert";# InstantCommons allows wiki to use images from https://commons.wikimedia.org$wgUseInstantCommons = false;# Periodically send a pingback to https://www.mediawiki.org/ with basic data# about this MediaWiki instance. The Wikimedia Foundation shares this data# with MediaWiki developers to help guide future development efforts.$wgPingback = true;# Site language code, should be one of the list in ./includes/languages/data/Names.php$wgLanguageCode = "en";# Time zone$wgLocaltimezone = "Europe/Berlin";## Set $wgCacheDirectory to a writable directory on the web server## to make your wiki go slightly faster. The directory should not## be publicly accessible from the web.#$wgCacheDirectory = "$IP/cache";$wgSecretKey = "b564d730428f48d0882f0ae67283fc844ba41347848b4868501bdb524ff86342";# Changing this will log out all existing sessions.$wgAuthenticationTokenVersion = "1";# Site upgrade key. Must be set to a string (default provided) to turn on the# web installer while LocalSettings.php is in place$wgUpgradeKey = "d8e35fccd5b424df";## For attaching licensing metadata to pages, and displaying an## appropriate copyright notice / icon. GNU Free Documentation## License and Creative Commons licenses are supported so far.$wgRightsPage = ""; # Set to the title of a wiki page that describes your license/copyright$wgRightsUrl = "";$wgRightsText = "";$wgRightsIcon = "";# Path to the GNU diff3 utility. Used for conflict resolution.$wgDiff3 = "";# The following permissions were set based on your choice in the installer$wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;## Default skin: you can change the default skin. Use the internal symbolic## names, e.g. 'vector' or 'monobook':$wgDefaultSkin = "vector";# Enabled skins.# The following skins were automatically enabled:wfLoadSkin( 'MinervaNeue' );wfLoadSkin( 'MonoBook' );wfLoadSkin( 'Timeless' );wfLoadSkin( 'Vector' );# End of automatically generated settings.# Add more configuration options below.

Do you mean Fandom wiki? You would want some kind of open source wiki platform. MediaWiki (used for Wikipedia) is probably the most popular and full featured.

It's all open source https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki

A little money, a little installation work, and this: https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki

This is overkill. The entirety of Wikipedia is made available for free download by the Wikimedia foundation, the code is open-source, and anyone can set up their own copy of Wikipedia on a normal PC with a big hard disk. Power this off a portable battery and solar panel and you have off-grid Wikipedia without any hardware hacking.

Last time I had occasion to use one - i used mediawiki

What are you thinking of here? Synapse has supported purging room history since 2016: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/911, and configurable data retention since 2019: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/5815.

Meanwhile, Matrix has never needed the full room history to be synchronised - when a server joins a room, it typically only grabs the last 20 messages. (It does needs to grab all the key-value state about the room, although these days that happens gradually in the background).

If you're wondering why Matrix implementations are often greedy on disk space, it's because they typically cache the key-value state aggressively (storing a snapshot of it for the room on a regular basis). However, that's just an implementation quirk; folks could absolutely come up with fancier datastructures to store it more efficiently; it's just not got to the top of anyone's todo list yet - things like performance and UX are considered much more important than disk usage right now.

some context re the Matrix isses, long history apparently: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues/14481#issuecomm...

Why not Matrix? Here's one reason: it has incredibly hard-to-debug edge cases, and plenty of bugs. One of my favourites is the one where people are kicked out of your room at random, which was reported a year ago[0]. It wasn't fixed, however, because the head of the Matrix foundation (Matthew) presumably didn't like the issue being posted on Twitter.

This is honestly really disappointing behaviour from a platform owner.

[0]: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues/14481

> That doesn't make this situation any less bad to the rest of the community.

How is the community suffering here? Let's say Element adds a bunch of baller stuff to their versions over the next few months and then closes the source. Can't the community just fork the last AGPL version? You might say, "well then no one can take the AGPL fork and make their own closed-source business", but do you want them to? Even if you do, they still can with the existing Apache-licensed version, just like Element is doing right now.

You're arguing that Element will lose a lot of contributions, but TFA points out that despite being super open, the vast majority of contributions are still made by Element employees (which seems to be true [0]). It's not the case that Element is looking to monetize the (small) contributions of others, it is the case that others are looking to monetize the (huge) contributions of Element.

And besides, aren't the MSCs the core of Matrix? It's already super possible to build your own compliant client and server.

The situation is that Element needs money to keep developing the ecosystem. It would be cool if there were a big network of donors and contributions, but there isn't. You're essentially saying, "that's fine, go out of business then, and the community will keep developing the ecosystem", but that's not happening now, and it can still happen anyway with the Apache-licensed versions, which again people can still contribute to.

[0]: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/graphs/contributors