Wiki Markup to Markdown Converter

What Is Wiki Markup

Wiki markup is a family of lightweight markup languages originally developed for wikis — collaborative web-based documentation platforms. The most widely used variant is MediaWiki markup, the syntax powering Wikipedia and thousands of other MediaWiki installations worldwide. Other notable dialects include DokuWiki markup (used by the DokuWiki platform), Confluence Wiki Markup (Atlassian's legacy wiki syntax), and Creole (a proposed standardized wiki markup language).

Wiki markup predates modern Markdown by several years and was designed primarily for web rendering within a specific wiki platform. Unlike Markdown, which was designed to be portable and readable as plain text, wiki markup is platform-specific: a MediaWiki page only renders correctly in a MediaWiki installation. This creates a migration challenge when teams want to move wiki content to modern documentation platforms.

Converting wiki markup to GitHub-Flavored Markdown solves the portability problem. Markdown is supported natively by GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Notion, Obsidian, Docusaurus, GitBook, Mintlify, and virtually every modern documentation tool — making converted content immediately usable across the entire documentation ecosystem.

Wiki to Markdown Syntax Mapping

The converter applies a comprehensive set of syntax transformations to map wiki markup constructs to their Markdown equivalents:

• Headings: MediaWiki == Heading 2 == becomes ## Heading 2, === Heading 3 === becomes ### Heading 3, and so on through H6.
• Bold: MediaWiki '''bold text''' becomes **bold text**.
• Italic: MediaWiki ''italic text'' becomes *italic text*.
• Bold italic: MediaWiki '''''bold italic''''' becomes ***bold italic***.
• Internal links: [[Page Name]] becomes [Page Name]() (href requires manual completion).
• External links: [https://example.com Link Text] becomes [Link Text](https://example.com).
• Unordered lists: Lines starting with * become lines starting with -.
• Ordered lists: Lines starting with # become 1. numbered list items.
• Templates: {{TemplateName}} constructs are removed and preserved as HTML comments.
• Horizontal rules: ---- becomes ---.
• Code blocks: <code> and <source lang="..."> tags become fenced code blocks with the appropriate language identifier.

How the Converter Works

The converter processes wiki markup using a multi-pass regex-based transformation pipeline. Each pass handles a specific class of syntax construct, operating on the text in a defined order to prevent transformation conflicts. The order of operations is: HTML tag removal, template removal, heading conversion, inline formatting (bold, italic), link conversion, list normalization, and code block conversion.

Regex-based wiki markup conversion is reliable for standard constructs but has inherent limitations for ambiguous or context-dependent syntax. The converter uses greedy matching with careful boundary conditions to handle the most common cases correctly. Edge cases like nested bold-within-italic or overlapping markup spans are resolved conservatively — preferring readable output over strict semantic accuracy when the two conflict.

The conversion runs entirely in your browser. No wiki markup data is sent to any server, and the conversion is instantaneous for page-length wiki content. For very long wiki articles (multiple thousands of lines), conversion completes in under a second on modern hardware.

MediaWiki vs DokuWiki Syntax

MediaWiki and DokuWiki are the two most common wiki platforms outside of Atlassian Confluence, and their markup syntaxes differ significantly despite serving the same purpose:

• Headings: MediaWiki uses equals signs around the heading text (== H2 ==). DokuWiki uses a descending equals sign count where more equals signs mean a larger heading (====== H1 ======, ===== H2 =====).
• Bold: MediaWiki uses triple single quotes ('''bold'''). DokuWiki uses double asterisks (**bold**), which is already Markdown-compatible.
• Italic: MediaWiki uses double single quotes (''italic''). DokuWiki uses double slashes (//italic//).
• Links: Both use double-bracket syntax for internal links, but DokuWiki uses a colon-separated namespace path ([[namespace:page]]) while MediaWiki uses plain page names ([[Page Name]]).

Select your source wiki dialect in the converter settings before processing to ensure the correct transformation rules are applied. Converting DokuWiki markup with MediaWiki rules (or vice versa) produces incorrect output for headings and italic formatting.

Common Use Cases

Wiki markup to Markdown conversion is used primarily in content migration and documentation modernization scenarios:

• Wikipedia content migration: Researchers, educators, and content teams extract Wikipedia article content (available under CC BY-SA license) and convert it to Markdown for use in documentation, course materials, or knowledge base articles.
• Internal wiki migration to GitHub/GitBook/Docusaurus: Engineering teams moving from self-hosted MediaWiki or DokuWiki installations to modern Git-based documentation platforms convert their existing wiki pages to Markdown as part of the migration.
• Confluence to Markdown migration: Organizations migrating away from Confluence (which supports both Storage Format XML and a wiki markup editor) convert wiki-formatted pages to Markdown for import into GitHub wikis, Notion, or Docusaurus.
• Archiving wiki content: Teams shutting down a wiki installation convert its content to Markdown files for long-term storage in a Git repository, ensuring the knowledge is preserved in a portable, durable format.

Tips for Clean Conversion

These practices produce the cleanest Markdown output from wiki markup:

• Clean templates before converting. MediaWiki templates are the most complex and least portable element of wiki markup. Review your source content and manually remove or replace complex templates with equivalent prose or Markdown constructs before running the converter.
• Check internal link formats. All internal wiki links will have empty hrefs in the output. Do a search for[]() in the converted Markdown to find and update all internal links with their correct target URLs on your new platform.
• Handle file and image links separately. Image and file references require media files to be migrated to your new platform independently of the page content. Export your wiki's media files before migrating pages, then update image src paths in the converted Markdown to point to the new locations.
• Review table conversions manually. GFM tables do not support merged cells. Any wiki tables with colspan or rowspan will be simplified during conversion. Review converted tables to ensure the simplified layout accurately communicates the original data structure.