media wiki's a particularly complicated thing to host and I don't think there's anything else quite like MiraHeze currently. It's been used by everything from video game wikis to casual conlangers to even some state governments so I'd say it's a pretty big deal
That's true only because mediawiki is designed for the infrastructure of a previous era, and massively overengineered for these kinds of use cases. Use any of the many free solutions for hosting a free site now. Use tiddlywiki in a single file for 99%+ of wikis. Or any linked markdown system. Making sites for small communities is easier than ever but harder to discover due to noise. That doesn't make mediawiki good.
