Limitations
The parser serves as the de facto standard for the MediaWiki syntax, as no formal syntax has been defined. Due to this lack of a formal definition, it has been difficult to create WYSIWYG editors for MediaWiki, or to port the parsing to another language.
MediaWiki is not designed to be a suitable replacement for dedicated online forum or blogging software, although extensions do exist to allow for both of these.
It is not uncommon for new MediaWiki users to make certain mistakes, such as forgetting to sign posts with four tildes (~~~~), or manually entering a plaintext signature, due to unfamiliarity with the idiosyncratic particulars involved in communication on MediaWiki discussion pages. On the other hand, the format of these discussion pages has been cited as a strength by one educator, who stated that it provides "more fine-grain capabilities for discussion than traditional threaded discussion forums. For example, instead of 'replying' to an entire message, the participant in a discussion can create a hyperlink to a new wiki page on any word from the original page. Discussions are easier to follow since the content is available via hyperlinked wiki page, rather than a series of reply messages on a traditional threaded discussion forum. However, except in few cases, students were not using this capability, possibly because of their familiarity with the traditional linear discussion style and a lack of guidance on how to make the content more 'link-rich'."
MediaWiki has little support for the creation of dynamically assembled documents, or pages that aggregate data from other pages. While it is possible to create new "special" pages, it requires coding an extension in PHP and thus administrative rights to the server running MediaWiki. Some research has been done on enabling such features directly within MediaWiki. The Semantic MediaWiki extension provides these features, but it is not in use on Wikipedia.
Upgrading MediaWiki is usually fully automated, requiring no changes to the site content or template programming. Historically troubles have been encountered when upgrading from significantly older versions.
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Famous quotes containing the word limitations:
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—Lawrence Balter (20th century)
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—H.L. (Henry Lewis)