I'm using a number of tools to keep track of stuff. A number of Dokwuki instances to keep stuff like setting, character info, lore, etc. DW even supports the public-facing sites of my worldbuilding, thanks to it being very easy to sync to from an intranet. For processing data, a number of SQLite databases, though I have yet to work on an automated, well-formatted means to extract the data I want from them. LibreOffice for some spreadsheets and graphs, as well as for "prettifying" any sort of export I want to do. All I'm missing is something like Freemind for higher-concept organizing, and a good FOSS tool for making maps.
this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
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Worldbuilding
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I installed a mediawiki server. Took about 15 minutes, doing all my worldbuilding on the wiki now. Just add some article, link it to others, categorize stuff, use the built-in search engine to find stuff, add images and other media. Basically everything you need for organizing worldbuilding.
Never heard of this, but it does sound interesting. Is it remotely editable - as long as the host PC is on, can you sign in and edit it from anywhere? Or is it just an editing & organizing tool on the host machine?
I added the Mediawiki engine on the home server, but I also have a synced copy of the engine on an RPi4, so we are not talking about big resources here.
Having it on the home server allows me to work on everything from my studio/office, but also from the living room PC. Theoretically I could access it remote, too, but I've set up the home server for in-house use only.
Not sure if you meant @Treczoks setup specifically, but in general Mediawiki runs like any other web application. You can register a domain and open ports on your router to make it available remotely. Mediawiki is what Wikipedia runs on so the experience is more or less the same as editing a Wikipedia article. It has a lot of stuff that's not strictly necessary for a single user environment like account management and email integration, but I can see it being useful if, like me, you like keeping track of how your ideas have evolved over time, since Mediawiki keeps track of article changes.
Other reasons I can see people picking it over Obsidian are ease of publication (just make it available as above) it's FOSS, which Obsidian is not, and you can allow others to collaborate with you. Obsidian puts easy remote access, publication, and collaboration behind a paywall.
Was it your intent to eventually make it public? Or was there something about mediawiki that made it attractive for personal notes? It's a bit of a chore for personal use compared to Obsidian, but I could see it being of interest for the version history.
It was not about making it public. It was, for me, the easiest solution to get things organized. I can just start an article on an idea and save it, and linking between articles and therefore ideas is easy. I can also integrate whatever media I need.
One big plus is the ability to use redirects as aliases. E.g. if there is an entry "Orc", there is a redirect "Orcs"->"Orc", so I can easily use either form in the text to link to it.
And on top of it, it's free.
Big scrivener document for text, big pure ref document for images!
Same, I've tried lots of different things and have never found anything that works perfectly for maintaining conlang vocab. I've tried a spreadsheet and database but I find them too awkward to work with easily. So the best way I've found is just using a formatted text file with markup (emacs+org-mode which has its own markup syntax that I like, and a lot of useful functionality for working with it--like metadata, searching, and exporting).
I think a wiki is probably the best format to organize all the world building stuff, but you still have to figure out for yourself how you want to organize it all and do all the linking--that's my weak point. (I know there's some specialized world-building software out there but it seems to all be online subscription stuff which is definitely not for me).
Pretty much the same