I am starting work on the wiki now. I may not reach a finished point today, but will at least have the old wiki moved to a temporary location today.
The process will be as follows:
Backup the file contents of the wiki.
Backup the database contents of the wiki.
Move the file contents of the wiki to a new address (to be posted when completed).
Lock down the wiki to *read-only*.
Install new, up to date, wiki software at the original wiki location.
Configure to require account creation before adding or editing pages, complete with the latest noCaptcha anti-bot countermeasure.
Setup volunteers with editor level access so that they can look over the old wiki and transfer articles completely manually to filter out the spam.
Please post here if you are one who has already volunteered, or would like to volunteer so that I have a list of people to contact when I reach that point.
Please do not post here unless volunteering so I have a clear list.
From this point on, the old wiki is no longer accessible at the original address. I have not yet locked it down, however. That will come next. After I have, I will post the link to where the old one is.
It appears to be locked down against any and all editing. However, not being too familiar with editing pages on a wiki, I would appreciate verification if you can please.
MediaWiki is available as a "One-Click Install" from the webhosting company that I host all of our websites on. The advantage of this feature is that I can set it to automatically keep the software up to date, or have it notify me when an update is available. The one thing stopping me from going this route right now is that I noticed the MediaWiki version listed in their One-Click Install list is a bit behind the actual current version available. Further, I am very interested in the upcoming 1.26 version of MediaWiki which will have Google's noCaptcha integrated as an option for the ConfirmEdit extension. This is what I am currently hoping to have available to us for proper bot protection.
If my host cannot give me a reasonable idea of how much time it will take after official release of 1.26 before their system will have it, I will go ahead with a manual install of 1.25.2.
In the meantime, I am going to look a little deeper into the phpBB 3.1 update.
Got a response. Going ahead with manual install for now.
Also going to create a subforum for tracking the porting of information to the install. It'll be under the current Wiki forum. This will be the end of this thread.