Thanks Eduard and Olof for your quick replies.
Both GitHub and GitLab wikis are markdown based git repositories based on the Ruby GEM project "Gollum" (extended in their own ways).
This system does make it easier for us to port media-wiki as "all we have to do"[1] is drum up a git repository that records all the edits by the right people at the rights rime and we get to keep our media wiki history.
GitLab as hosted by gitlab.org provides a search for the wiki attached to a project. It's the same box as a search in the project, but searches the wiki when in wiki mode.
Let's take these features one at a time using this page: https://docs.g itlab.com/ee/user/markdown.html
Image uploads (as far as i can see you have to upload the files elsewhere first, e.g. in a repository)
There's an "attach a file" link at the bottom right hand side of the editor box. All files, images, videos etc are held in the same repository as the wiki's markdown or md files.
Templates
A commit 3 days ago: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/merge_requ ests/8487 We'd have to wait for it, but it seems actively filling in what's missing.
Categories
More than a directory categorisation? Is this an added meta- categorisation required?
Redirects
Not supported. Not sure if it could be regarding security etc.
Even fundamental styling/layouting would be hard to impossible (for beginners: try to re-create our main page [1] or our latest release notes [2])
I question the need for this complex layout, it made sense back when the website was an uneditable static site not updated in years. But it's now an uneditable dynamic site updated in weeks. Which is completely different and I don't think we need to be as complex with developer/contributor information.
Useful things like Namespaces (including user pages) / Subpages
For user pages, a person can make as many wiki's for themselves as the want in their own gitlab user account, no need for inkscape's project wiki to be used for that. Directories are available for subpages.
Useful tools like they can be found on [3]
Not everything will be available. Somethings might be though.
Watchlists and the like (e.g. [4] which is immensely useful)
Since it's a git repository, a user can watch for changes and see recent changes just like any repository.
There are some advantages too, such as dynamic checkboxes for task lists (immensely useful for what we do with the wiki), inline diffs, code syntax highlighting, linking to issues, code commits, users, milestone etc. Linking to specific files in the main repository.
Basically some useful code/project integration features which we'd never have on media-wiki.
Also it'd be fun, but not really that hard, to have the website keep a copy of the wiki repository and to index it every so often. Imagine being able to run a search on the website and wiki at the same time. Oh the fun we could have! ;-)
Best Regards, Martin Owens
[1] All we have to do is not in any way intended to make you believe it would be easy, qualitative or fast. But it could be.