Comment Re:Serious issues with this project (Score 1) 194
No fine-tuning user access, no support for external authentication
MediaWiki supports both of these. The first is the userrights array, which you can configure in LocalSettings.php, and groups configured in the usergroup table. The second is by subclassing AuthPlugin.php and telling it exactly what you want — autocreate local users? create remote users? fetch a password db or authenticate externally? replace the login and logout pages?
Most decent external authentication providers set REMOTE_USER, and meta has a plugin for autologin with REMOTE_USER.
not easy to add new markup
I haven't had a reason to try this, so I don't know. But you can make pseudomarkup really easily via the template feature, e.g., map {{{serif|foo}}} to <font face="my favorite serif font">foo</font>, or whatever. In fact, templates are how Wikipedia does their infoboxes (the tables on the right side of articles about prominent public figures or businesses or whatever).