 Official logo with slogan | |
Screenshot  The main page of the English Wikipedia running MediaWiki 1.24 | |
| Original author(s) | Magnus Manske, Lee Daniel Crocker |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Wikimedia Foundation and MediaWiki volunteers |
| Initial release | January 25, 2002 |
| Stable release | 1.36.1[1] (June 23, 2021) [±] |
| Written in | PHP |
| Operating system | Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, NetWare |
| Size | ~30 MB |
| Available in | 209[2] languages |
| Type | Wiki |
| License | GPLv2+[3] |
| Website | mediawiki |
MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki application. Originally developed by Magnus Manske and improved by Lee Daniel Crocker, it runs on many websites, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikimedia Commons.[4][5] It is written in the PHP programming language and stores the contents into a database. Like WordPress, which is based on a similar licensing & architecture, it has become the dominant software in its category.
The first version of the software was deployed to serve the needs of the Wikipedia encyclopedia in 2002.[6] Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects continue to define a large part of the requirement set for MediaWiki.[7] The software is optimized to efficiently handle large projects, which can have terabytes of content and hundreds of thousands of hits per second.[7][8] Because Wikipedia is one of the world's largest websites, achieving scalability through multiple layers of caching and database replication has been a major concern for developers.
The software has more than 800 configuration settings[9] and more than 2,000 extensions available for enabling various features to be added or changed.[10] On Wikipedia alone, more than 1000 automated and semi-automated bots and other tools have been developed to assist in editing.[11]
It has also been deployed by some companies as an internal knowledge management system,[12] and some educators have assigned students to use MediaWiki for collaborative group projects.[13]
- ^ Reed, Sam (23 June 2021). "Security and maintenance release: 1.31.15 / 1.35.3 / 1.36.1". MediaWiki-announce (Mailing list).
- ^ "Supported languages". translatewiki.net.
- ^ "Copyright". mediawiki.org.
- ^ Magnus Manske's announcement of "PHP Wikipedia", wikipedia-l, 2001-08-24
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Barrettwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Cite error: The named reference
MediaWiki_historywas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ a b "What is MediaWiki?". Retrieved 2013-08-04.
- ^ Česky. "Wikipedia:Statistics – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". En.wikipedia.org. Retrieved 2010-05-30.
- ^ "Category:MediaWiki configuration settings". MediaWiki. December 2, 2014. Retrieved 2014-12-02.
- ^ "Extension Matrix". MediaWiki. Retrieved 2014-12-02.
- ^ "Wikipedia statistics – Bot editing activity". Wikimedia Foundation. October 31, 2012. Retrieved 2012-11-15.
- ^ "Sites using MediaWiki/corporate". MediaWiki. Retrieved 2010-05-30.
- ^ Schacht, Paul, "The Collaborative Writing Project", Using Wiki in Education (PDF)