{"id":100,"date":"2026-09-22T21:14:48","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T19:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/linuxundich.de\/en\/?p=100"},"modified":"2026-10-04T01:39:47","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T23:39:47","slug":"ubuntu-wiki-a-fresh-start-with-mediawiki-instead-of-moinmoin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linuxundich.de\/en\/ubuntu-wiki-a-fresh-start-with-mediawiki-instead-of-moinmoin\/","title":{"rendered":"Ubuntu Wiki: A Fresh Start with MediaWiki Instead of MoinMoin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the early years of ubuntuusers.de<\/a> (in German), I wrote quite a few wiki articles myself. Not just technical how-tos, but also pages for the community itself, such as a guide on how to ask questions the right way<\/a> (in German), so the forum wouldn’t get yet another \u201cdoesn’t work, please help\u201d for the hundredth time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What stuck with me most is how quickly a collection like that grows when a few people contribute regularly, and how quickly it gathers dust when they don’t. In the German-speaking world, we’ve been spoiled to this day: in my opinion, the ubuntuusers wiki<\/a> (in German) is one of the best pieces of Linux documentation out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The official Ubuntu wiki always had a harder time next to it, with a dusty look, two parallel addresses, and for anyone who wanted to contribute, a request on Launchpad first. Unsurprisingly, people over here looking for a solution rarely ended up there. Now it’s getting a complete restart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two wikis become one<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Strictly speaking, there were actually two official wikis: besides wiki.ubuntu.com<\/a>, there was also the CommunityHelpWiki at help.ubuntu.com\/community<\/a>. Which one was responsible for what content, probably not even Canonical itself knew in the end. If you wanted to create a page, you first had to guess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s over now: both legacy wikis are being replaced by a single new one, which went into production<\/a> this week. Under the hood, MediaWiki<\/a> is now doing the work instead of MoinMoin, the same software that powers the Arch Wiki and Wikipedia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The switch was overdue. The old wikis ran on a MoinMoin version that still requires Python 2 and has accordingly gone without security patches for years. Debian is currently busy with a similar migration<\/a>, so Ubuntu isn’t alone in making the move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Open\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
In the German-speaking world, when it comes to Ubuntu questions, there is still hardly any way around the ubuntuusers.de wiki, which is maintained by the community.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

All You Need to Contribute Is an Ubuntu One Account<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Authors will notice the biggest change. Until now, you had to apply for membership in a wiki editors group on Launchpad and then wait for a person to decide, at their own discretion, whether a total stranger could be trusted or not. From now on, an Ubuntu One account is enough to edit existing pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want to create new pages or touch protected ones, you need ten edits and a first contribution that is at least four days old<\/a>. That’s the classic autoconfirmed model from the Wikipedia world. New contributors have to earn a bit of trust before they get to the delicate spots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can write either in the visual editor with slash commands or in the source editor, which comes with syntax highlighting, linting, live preview, and multi-cursor support. On top of that, there’s a dark mode, a mobile-friendly interface, image uploads including galleries, automatic spam filters, and, for the tinkerers among you, a sandboxed Lua interpreter for dynamic templates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
This is what the new Ubuntu wiki looks like: after more than 20 years, MediaWiki replaces MoinMoin, complete with dark mode and a mobile-friendly interface.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

50 pages don’t make a wiki yet<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Here’s the catch: the new wiki has next to no content. Instead of migrating tens of thousands of pages from two decades, Ubuntu is starting with around 50 pages and the announcement that the community should catch up on the rest itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can understand that, since a good chunk of the old collection was outdated, duplicated or simply spam, and only what is still worth keeping should be carried over. Still, it means for now: old bookmarks and the hits from your last ten Google searches lead nowhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At least you won’t end up on a bare 404. Instead you get search results in the new wiki, search results in the archive, and the offer to create the page yourself. With a bit of goodwill, the dead end turns straight into an article of your own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
The new wiki is still pretty empty: it launches with around 50 pages, and the community is supposed to contribute the rest.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The old content lives in the archive<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you want to browse the old material, you’ll find it as a text archive on GitHub<\/a> (already converted to MediaWiki syntax, which makes migrating individual pages much easier), as a tarball with images, attachments and revision history<\/a>, and as a web viewer<\/a> you can run locally or online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team adds a warning right away: the dump is a few months old, so very recent edits from the old wiki are missing. The redirects from help.ubuntu.com\/community are supposed to follow in the next few days. For now, you can report errors via Discourse to the Communications Council<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"An\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
If you miss an old page, you can find it in the archive and copy it over to the new wiki by hand \u2013 and update it while you’re at it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Technically, this is a clean break, and getting rid of the editor hurdle was long overdue. But whether this turns into a serious knowledge base again won’t be decided by the software. It depends on whether enough people show up to bring the good old pages over and update them along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all, the Arch Wiki isn’t good because of MediaWiki, and ubuntuusers never was either. What do you think: is the effort for the official wiki worth it at all? Are there still enough authors out there to fill the wiki with life? Or is the era of distro wikis over anyway?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ubuntu wiki now runs on new software: MediaWiki replaces the aging MoinMoin. The catch: the wiki starts with just around 50 pages, while the old content sits in the archive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"lui_source_id":46906,"lui_source_hash":"18d7cff4dc626853a0395cff2d9367652a2a6047d179d07f66f85896a567ce3c","lui_source_translated":"2026-10-03","lui_source_reviewed":true,"lui_via_url":"","lui_via_label":"","lui_source_url":"","lui_source_label":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gnu-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/linuxundich.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/linuxundich.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/linuxundich.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linuxundich.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linuxundich.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/linuxundich.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123,"href":"https:\/\/linuxundich.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linuxundich.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/linuxundich.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linuxundich.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linuxundich.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}