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I'm typing this in Konqueror because for some reason, the O'Reilly login is endlessly redirecting in Mozilla. I'm pointing this out just as an example that proprietary software development isn't some magic pill which will solve your problems. In fact, in many cases, it's the exact opposite. Especially in the field of web development, open source software tends to kick the ass of proprietary software any day, because so many people can easily contribute to something written in PHP or Python.
I'm one of the many developers of MediaWiki. With regard to the MediaWiki documentation, I would point out that there's a MediaWiki handbook in the works on our Meta-Wiki. Systematic work on it has started only a couple of months ago, and many documents are still scattered about (mostly on Meta), but it's getting there.
MediaWiki development is perhaps more chaotic than that of many other open source projects which were started with a clear vision in mind. The vision of MediaWiki developed as Wikipedia progressed and got its first sister projects - Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikibooks, Wiktionary. The wiki software didn't even have a proper name until July 2003. The good thing about it is that it is constantly being pushed forward by the needs of the Wikimedia Foundation projects, that there is a huge user community which reviews what we are doing and shouts at us if we screw up, and that the risk of abandonment is virtually non-existent.
I would either advise you to wait a while until MediaWiki documentation matures, or to use one of the wiki hosting services, such as Wikidev.net or myoo.de. One of the many benefits of open source is that anyone can start such a service, instead of just Ben and Mena.
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