Differences with SharePoint wiki

The purpose of this page is to describe differences between SharePoint's wiki and MediaWiki. They are quite different. Versions of SharePoint are different from one another; this page is not specific about the differences.

SharePoint's wiki has historically been intended to be edited from Windows machines and the Internet Explorer browser. MediaWiki was always intended to be cross-platform. SharePoint has become more cross-platform over time. It is common still to find that SharePoint works a little less well with Chrome, Firefox, etc, than with IE.

SharePoint does not have categories, which are quite useful in encyclopedia-building and to find related subjects.

SharePoint does not have templates for building pages in a standard format.

MediaWiki's search can find all main space, and with special advanced search can search other namespaces (user, templates, categories, etc)

In MediaWiki, an editor can edit a section of a page, and fairly conveniently link to a section of a page.

In MediaWiki, an automatic table of contents appears in a page with sections. It can be suppressed with a magic word.

Comparisons between past versions of a page are easier to read in MediaWiki than in SharePoint.

SharePoint has document directories in which it is often easy to upload a file. Thus it is easier than MediaWiki to use as a document manager. Additionally, SharePoint has the ability to checkout files, which makes it easier to have multiple people editing a file.

SharePoint pages can have multiple fonts. However, SharePoint's WYSIWYG editor may induce formatting changes in vertical spacing or fonts. This sounds like "just a bug" but in old versions of SharePoint it happened so much that one would routinely give up on choosing the font. In the current versions (13?) it happens less.

SharePoint has special handling of "Web parts" which does not have close analogues in MediaWiki. Some versions of SharePoint refer to "Master Pages" (meaning not known to this author)

MediaWiki has a vibrant extensions community. Most things you'd want a wiki to do, one or more people have attempted to create an extension.

MediaWiki has methods (via Semantic MediaWiki and Cargo) to store and query data within pages, minimizing duplication across pages.

Another comparison list to combine
In MediaWiki
 * Content in disjointed linked pages
 * Edit online, and content changes are immediately visible
 * No implied organization - Organization can be built (Navboxes, Infoboxes, Portals, etc.)
 * Finer granularity - Fields, Subobjects, Reports

In SharePoint
 * Content in word, xlsx, pdf, etc.
 * Any duplication will become out of sync
 * Data at rest
 * Organized by site or metadata
 * Can be set up by an office administrator
 * Security by workspace -- very important

Sources and further reading

 * https://www.xwiki.com/en/comparisons/xwiki-vs-sharepoint
 * http://wikiworks.com/semantic-mediawiki-vs-sharepoint.html
 * http://wikiworks.com/enterprise-mediawiki-vs-sharepoint.html