When comparing MediaWiki vs Quip, the Slant community recommends MediaWiki for most people. In the question“What is the best multi-user wiki?” MediaWiki is ranked 2nd while Quip is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose MediaWiki is:
Mediawiki is a widely used wiki engine. It is used to power Wikipedia and thus most people will be more comfortable/accustomed to using MediaWiki.
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro The de facto standard
Mediawiki is a widely used wiki engine. It is used to power Wikipedia and thus most people will be more comfortable/accustomed to using MediaWiki.
Pro Version control
MediaWiki allows viewing past revisions of pages.
Pro Thanks to Wikipedia it is thoroughly documented
Pro Free and open source
Licensed under GPL.
Pro It has a powerful templating system
Pro It has a usable WYSIWYG editor
Pro Great multilingual support
MediaWiki has full support for over 65 languages and partial support for over 300.
Pro Runs on any PHP server
It requires a webserver running PHP 5.2 or later of any kind.
Pro Multiple database support
MediaWiki can store data in MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle and SQLite databases.
Pro Amazing mobile interface
Unlike other mobile apps, Quip has really innovated the text editor on mobile, making for a good Evernote alternative. It has a great interface for formatting text that stays out of your road so to maximize how much room you have to type.
Pro Offline editing
Quip allows for offline editing of documents which then sync upon connection to Wi-Fi. This way users can continuing working while not connected to a data signal, but they can still back up their work when they do finally get one.
Pro Private document sharing
Files can be shared with others via a URL. The owner of the shared document can set it to be in read-only mode or they can allow anyone to edit it. Collaborators don't need to have a Quip account to participate. This feature makes for a great Evernote alternative, for those looking for a different app that has this similar function.
Pro Highly compatible
Quip can export documents to several formats, including .DOC, .PDF, .HTML, as well as a couple of others. This allows for compatibility with a wide selection of other apps.
Cons
Con Access control requires an extension
There is no built-in access control, but you can download an extension for ACL.
Con New version has performance issues
…on my old phone. Yes I know my phone is at fault but the old version wasn't annoyingly slow in the Spreadsheet component.
Con Not really free with stringent controls on trial
The trial is content limited which means if you start using it quite a bit they'll pick the perfect moment to swoop in and start charging you. It's better for them because it means they can look at your account and pick the best time to ask you to pay (hey we notice you're using Quip lots and have a new project you just started how about you pay now or you lose everything).
Con Limited formatting on spreadsheets
Within spreadsheet cells, you can't do things like, for example, taking part of the text and aligning it to the center or to the left. Furthermore, in the mobile app, you can't jump to the next line to keep writing inside the same cell.
Con Can't rename files
You can't really rename documents per se in Quip. What you do is put the first line of the document as its title, so that it is displayed on the main list of documents on the app. The program suggests to combine it with a HL (Large Heading) format.