On 2/5/06, Roger Chrisman roger@rogerchrisman.com wrote:
Could anyone who feels with conviction that Mediawiki is NOT a CMS, please explain.
I don't. In fact, I believe very strongly that a wiki is indeed a CMS.. since a wiki's primary purpose is to .. be a system to manage content. However, some wikis do it in a "wiki way" and break the common-sense rules found with the older CMS'.
Now it's that "wiki way" philosophical difference that sets a "real-CMS" apart from the "wiki-CMS".
A "proper CMS" manages its content in the traditionally strict "I am the management system, I am in charge" most especially with permissions. It focuses on the _management_ part of CMS.
A "wiki CMS" merely plays host to its content in a loose "let me help you put your content somewhere" most especially by allowing loginless anonymous contribution. It focuses on the _content_ part of CMS.
Mediawiki is not a CMS in the traditional sense because it has not been created with the kind of strict security model which a traditional CMS would have. Even though there are roles and permissions in MediaWiki (page locking, administrative pages) I understand that there is no faith in the existing security to extend it into CMS-like stuff like per-page unix style permissions.. like what a "traditional CMS" would have.
So the easy way to explain mediawiki's stance is to say it's not a CMS.
Technically text files in a directory is a CMS.. technically mediawiki is a CMS.