[electricEmu]

Hardly needs maintenance at all was not my experience.

My primary driver for seeking out a new wiki was because of how difficult testing and managing Dokuwiki can be. Updates to the main wiki are infrequent, plugins are often abandoned, and the setup, running, and maintained of the wiki is non-trivial.

I recommended wiki.js is easier to run, uses markdown by default, backs up data as flat files in a git repository, and does not require many resources either. Plus, there's a supported Docker image that works out of the box.

There's no problem with choice. Dokuwiki is frequently recommended to new users and wonder if that wiki is an appropriate recommendation. I explicitly would suggest wiki.js or something similar to someone not already running Dokuwiki.

[geppetto]

I've never had an issue in 7 years while upgrading (unpack a tgz file and minor cleaning) so my experience is different. Backup is not an issue because all pages are just text files I can rsync anywhere. Plugins can be updated clicking a button in the admin panel and infrequent updates to the main wiki is a feature to me while all is working fine. In the end it depends of what you use it for and right now I trust this solution and I'm confident it will keep working in the future.

I've looked into wiki.js and its really nice but I doubt I could run it on my hardware and I'd have to install node and Postgres (docker is not my thing, I'm old school!). Anyway the real deal breaker to me is that mathjax support is not there yet and I need formulas.

[electricEmu]

Dokuwiki will function perfectly for some specific use-cases. The file format and plugins are not something that should be glossed over with Dokuwiki though.

Yes, it's possible to rsync flat files from Dokuwiki to somewhere else, but Dokuwiki files are stored in a unique format. Moving files from one machine to another does not make the format more ubiquitous or easier to parse. The amount of work required to migrate data out of Dokuwiki may be trivial to some very experienced developers but would be neigh impossible for greener developers.

The plugin ecosystem of Dokuwiki is reminiscent of Jenkins. Dokuwiki plugins can do anything, but few seem to do them well or without quirks. Some require updating the CSS and HTML template for a theme. Others require modifying the host system. Few plugins are active, modern, and useful to more than a subset of specialized scenarios. The mobile editors are truly an exercise in frustration for even tech-savvy users.

Dokuwiki is great if you have specialized needs and accept the file format costs. The specialized markup language and plugin ecosystem are a type lock-in that should really be stated more up-front to new and perspective Dokuwiki users. I do recommend Dokuwiki for very particular and specific needs, but not as a general purpose wiki for "most people".