Here's a bunch of pluses and minuses for TWiki and Tiki, from a variety of contributors - sysadmins, users, wikimasters.

Feel free to add your feedback (and your signature!) below!

Tiki

• - The UI is vast and complex...not very friendly.
• - Horrible ML
• - Full HTML formatting is not directly supported - you have to check the "Allow HTML" box before it will recognise the HTML
  • + but this allows site admins to disable user-entered html, which is especially important for public wikis
• - Lack of support for some fairly basic formatting features - like multiple levels of bulleting (not really, you just have to dig deep to find it in the help)
• + The UI looks very nice.
• + Nice interactive-user feedbacks, such as "# of users currently logged in", make you feel at home.
• + [Tiki is] easier [than TWiki] to set up on an ISP - providing you have Telnet access. It took me less than 30 mins from downloading the installation files, installing for the first time and getting a working tiki up and running.
• + There are many functions available as standard. Many of these would be additional plugins with the TWiki - they are enabled using a simple switch with the tiki.
• + In theory, the speed of the tiki should be largely independent of the size of content as it is a database driven tool. i.e. it shouldn't slow down further when the content increases in size.
• + Because it's basic formatting options are quite simple, it's very quick to get up to speed with
• + When you preview, you can EditOnPreviewPage. Whilst this is not WYSIWYG, it does make it easier to corrolate and correct your source with the generated page and is much better than having to go "BACK" to the edit window
• + The easy availability of the tiki help page on the same page as the edit window makes it very easy to refer to
• + Support for topic names as phrases not just WikiWord 's ( twiki supports this with [[square bracket]] links )
• + RSS support, so you can make a summary of your Wiki or your latest articles in another page or program
• + Much better skinning and a lot of great skins to choose from out of the box (any user can change his default skin ( twiki does this also )
• + A LOGIN BOX! (and a logout link)
• + Simple plugins are very easy to develop.

TWiki

• + Supports lots of twiki formatting which can be used to quickly create complex pages
• + In addition, it also supports full HTML formatting
• + Prompt for LOGIN when, and only when, REQUIRED!
• + The link to the twiki help pages on the same page as the edit window makes it very easy to refer to
• + Tremendous range of plugins
• - Because there is so much available, it can be a bit daunting for new users (hard to even find the edit button sometimes)
• - Construction of skins is still ad hoc and time consuming.

Summary comments

• On the whole I favour the TWiki because of its flexibility and extensibility. But for adding interactive content to a simple site the tiki wiki does have its advantages in ease of maintainance.
• I much prefer the TWiki, because the tiki is too restrictive i.e. it has a much reduced formatting suite available. I guess this is because I have lots of TWiki experience - but I find it hard to accept no support for multiple levels of indentation, bullet levels, etc.
• There are many things I do like about the tiki which would be beneficial if added to the TWiki.

Contributors

-- CrawfordCurrie - 12 Dec 2003
-- PeterAlbiez - 12 Dec 2003
-- DarrenWedgwood - 12 Dec 2003
-- AigarsMahinovs - 24 Feb 2004
-- MattWilkie - 24 Feb 2004
-- DaleBrayden - 02 Aug 2004
-- WillNorris