MediaWiki
Ranked 3 of 9 wiki software by recommenders
People recommend MediaWiki for its wide feature set, multimedia support and easy multi-user editing. Critics point to security risks from embedded JavaScript and an awkward authoring flow.
People recommend MediaWiki for its wide feature set, multimedia support and easy multi-user editing. Critics point to security risks from embedded JavaScript and an awkward authoring flow.
24 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 15
- criticize it
- 9
- approval share
- 63%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 6 years
Median of the 3 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 15 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Rich features and multimedia support
“Because of MediaWiki's multimedia capabilities it can handle complex information just fine, obviously much better than printed predecessors.”
Comment from 1 Nov 2025 on Hacker News “Mediawiki as a whole has a feature set that 95% of organizations will only scratch the surface of.”
Comment from 5 Aug 2026 in “Atlassian Rovo Exfiltrates Data, Bypassing Controls” “Mediawiki is very very nice and it has a lot of cool features i've been loving over the years.”
Comment from 26 Mar 2026 in “Personal Encyclopedias” Easy for many people to edit
“my blog is on Mediawiki (which I like so anyone can edit) but the authoring flow is kind of annoying”
Comment from 3 May 2026 in “A Desktop Made for One” “which I chose because it has good support for allowing users to edit it”
Comment from 2 Mar 2026 in “How to Record and Retrieve Anything You've Ever Had to Look Up Twice”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Security risks from embedded JavaScript
“allow executable JavaScript to be stored and served directly from user-editable namespaces”
Comment from 5 Mar 2026 in “Wikipedia in read-only mode following mass admin account compromise” “the fact that MediaWiki sometimes lets editors embed JavaScript could be dangerous”
Comment from 5 Mar 2026 in “Wikipedia in read-only mode following mass admin account compromise” “Everyone knows that MediaWiki is exploitable.”
Comment from 25 Oct 2026 in “Show HN: Steal My Bitcoin”
Other wiki software people recommend
The four most recommended other wiki software, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Confluence | 38 | 80 | 32% | 11 | 12 yrs3 owners | — |
| TiddlyWiki | 19 | 1 | 95% | 7 | — | Approved |
| MediaWikiThis page | 15 | 9 | 63% | 8 | 6 yrs3 owners | — |
| Outline | 10 | 0 | 100% | 7 | — | Approved |
| OzBrain | 8 | 4 | 67% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
24 of the 27 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Everyone knows that MediaWiki is exploitable.”
“MediaWiki is the last thing that prevents me never dealing (directly) with it again.”
“It has a bunch of defaults that make it not SEO friendly.”
“non-developers have to use this and Markdown+plugins is hard”
“Mediawiki as a whole has a feature set that 95% of organizations will only scratch the surface of.”
“if I had to optimize I think the only option might be "don't use mediawiki"”
“Mediawiki seems pretty solid on that front in my 10+ years of running and using it”
“my blog is on Mediawiki (which I like so anyone can edit) but the authoring flow is kind of annoying”
“provide a serious speed boost to everything from WordPress to MediaWiki in my experience”
“store in Mediawiki long-term”
“A good wiki like MediaWiki supports various levels of visibility”
“The MediaWiki server died and I had backups, but... literally no one in the family would've tried to resurrect it.”
“which uses a database. Then again it does support sqlite”
“Mediawiki is very very nice and it has a lot of cool features i've been loving over the years.”
“I expressly like the interwiki linking form so it's seamless what's in the Wikimedia universe”
“all in all it make the process of taking note of the reference quick”
“allow executable JavaScript to be stored and served directly from user-editable namespaces”
“the fact that MediaWiki sometimes lets editors embed JavaScript could be dangerous”
“which I chose because it has good support for allowing users to edit it”
“Mediawiki destroyed that because Jimbo had a different vision, and because they didn't care.”
“my own mediawiki copy that has a starting point from the pre-AI days”
“I suspect it has to do with the Mediawiki because the top-level of the domain was a static site and indexed right away!”
“One is light on resources, storing just the information with some formatting hints”
“Because of MediaWiki's multimedia capabilities it can handle complex information just fine, obviously much better than printed predecessors.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.