Why wikitext
Wikven authors content in Wikitext, MediaWiki's markup, rather than Markdown. If you are coming from a Markdown-based site generator, here is what changes, and why you might want it.
What wikitext adds
- Templates — reusable, parameterised snippets transcluded with
{{...}}. Markdown has no equivalent; you copy and paste instead. See Pages#Templates. - Parser functions and magic words — light logic and computed values (
{{#if:}}, dates, page info) written in the page itself. - Structured linking —
[[Page]]internal links, categories and redirects, managed by the wiki rather than by hand. - Rich media and references — image thumbnails and galleries and footnotes in one consistent syntax.
- An extension ecosystem — syntax highlighting, math and more, added as extensions.
What Markdown does better
- Simplicity — a smaller, more readable syntax with a gentler learning curve, especially for tables and templates.
- Ubiquity — Markdown is supported almost everywhere and has a single standard, CommonMark; wikitext has several dialects and thinner editor and linting tooling.
- Lightweight rendering — Markdown renders with a small library, whereas wikitext normally needs MediaWiki itself.
Where Wikven fits
That last cost, running MediaWiki, is the one Wikven removes: it renders your wikitext through MediaWiki once, at build time, and ships plain static HTML. You get templates, parser functions and the rest with nothing to run in production. Reach for Wikven when that trade is worth it, typically when your content is already wikitext, or when templates and transclusion would save real work.